


Through the Night, Behind the Wheel, the Mileage Clicking West

by neverfaraway



Category: due South
Genre: Angst, Everyone Knows Fraser's Beautiful, F/M, First Time, M/M, Male Friendship, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Ray Vecchio Has Issues Okay, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 23,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23716303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfaraway/pseuds/neverfaraway
Summary: You know how it is: you get divorced, sign up with the Feds, fall in love with your best friend... If Ray Vecchio has a talent, it’s for screwing up second chances.
Relationships: Benton Fraser & Ray Kowalski, Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	1. Including the Hot Dog Stand

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I first watched due South when it was broadcast in the ‘90s, and this fic has been percolating in bits and bobs on my hard drive ever since. Lockdown finally gave me the opportunity to finish it – it’s a long time since I watched the show coherently, start-to-finish, and I’m British, so no doubt you’ll be able to spot where I’ve played fast-and-loose with canon chronology _and_ with US English. I apologise in advance and hope any inaccuracies aren’t too distracting. I love both Rays, and Francesca, and Diefenbaker, and everything else about that stupid show so deeply – this is my long-overdue love song to due South and everything about it that made it so wonderful.

“I don’t got friends, Benny, alright? I got colleagues, and family, and I got people I date, but friends? Not a one of ‘em.”

Ray wipes the corners of his mouth with a napkin and pushes his chair back from the table.

Fraser, for once, has succumbed to the heat and slung his jacket over the chair beside him. His shirt-sleeves are rolled up – apparently once the clock ticks past six, and provided the weather is unseasonably warm, the little switch in Fraser’s head flips to ‘off duty’ and he starts shedding clothing and flashing tanned, muscular forearms at every unsuspecting waitress in the city. He is leaning forward earnestly, the frown on his face speaking of an impending well-intentioned argument.

“I don’t believe that for a second, Ray – ”

“Yeah, well,” Ray says, with a twist of something just short of bitterness. “Guy like you, you’re never stuck for people who think you’re the best.”

“On the contrary, there have been many times in which I’ve felt adrift amongst my colleagues and peers.”

“And here I thought Mounties stuck together.”

Fraser looks vaguely uncomfortable and clears his throat. “I believe we’ve already established that my standing amongst many of my fellow officers in Canada is a little less than favourable. Nevertheless, it would be churlish if I were to count myself anything other than extremely fortunate in considering you a very good friend. My best friend, in fact.” Beside the table Diefenbaker gives a soft, disapproving whuff. Fraser adds: “Apart, of course, from Diefenbaker – who likes you a lot too, Ray, though I suspect his feelings in that regard may owe something to your willingness to facilitate his burgeoning addiction to jelly donuts.”

Ray gives him a level stare over the rim of his coffee cup. “Fraser, when a guy’s sitting here counting his friends on the fingers of one hand, I’m seriously thinkin’ the dog don’t count.”

“I would argue, Ray, that when assessing the number of one’s friends to be below five, one would be foolish to discount Diefenbaker purely on the grounds of his being a dog.”

“You telling me beggars can’t be choosers?”

Diefenbaker noses wetly at Ray’s hand and licks his fingers clean of powdered sugar. Ray gets to his feet, pulls a face and wipes his hand on a napkin. “Look,” he says, as Fraser follows him out, “all I’m sayin’ is, you gotta give me some time on this one. Couple-a months ago you rock up in Chicago, I meet you for the first time, and now you’re saving my life for, what, the third time?”

“Ah, fourth, actually, if you include the incident with the hot dog stand.”

“Thanks, Benny. This is a little intense, you know, for a guy like me. Sure, I date a lot, I got more cousins than the freakin’ Von Trapps, but this whole _buddies_ thing, it’s gonna take time getting used to.”

“Are you saying you would not, in fact, like to accompany me to the exhibition?”

“ _No_ , I’m _not_ saying that – ”

“I believe that was the issue that prompted this conversation, Ray.”

Ray rolls his eyes. “Geez, alright, I’ll come with you to the museum. I can’t think of a better way to spend my Saturday off.”

“Really, if you’d rather not go, I’d be perfectly willing to attend the exhibition alone – ”

“Can it, Fraser. You’re just fishing for enthusiasm, and I can tell you it’ll be a cold day in hell before Ray Vecchio expresses excitement at the idea of staring at a collection of hand-chiselled nostril flutes.” He sighs. “Only for you, Benny.”

They’ve reached the Riviera, so Ray holds the door open for Diefenbaker, who hops inside and sprawls happily on the back seat. Fraser is looking thoughtful.

“Are you trying to tell me, Ray, in a round-about method, that you consider me to be your best friend in return?”

“At the minute, Fraser, you’re my only friend in the world apart from a deaf wolf with a fast-food habit. Now, get in the car.”

Fraser smiles that ‘your friendship is the greatest gift a Mountie could ever receive’ smile and takes off his hat before sliding into the passenger seat.

-

On the north side of Chicago, in an apartment he can’t afford, Ray Kowalski is supposed to be packing books – Stella’s books, the ones she used to study when they were newlyweds and living in that shitty studio off Division Street - into removal crates. 

“Hey, Stel,” he calls. “You want this?”

Stella appears in the doorway, beautiful and sad, and waits for him to show her what he’s found. He holds up the picture and watched tears bloom in her eyes. She shakes her head. “No, you have it.”

He wants her to have it; he wants to force her to remember all the great times they’ve had together. Why does she think it’s any better that he have it, does she want him to sit alone in this apartment crying into his microwave pizza? “You sure?”

She nods, and he reluctantly places the picture on the ‘Ray’ pile, alongside the other souvenirs and keepsakes she’s already rejected.

“You’re keeping the cork from our wedding champagne?” she asks, coming closer, as though she’s afraid he might shatter if she makes a sudden move. 

“Unless you want it?”

“No, no. It’s yours.” She settles on the edge of the armchair and gazes at the detritus of their lives together. He looks, too, wondering what it is that catches her eye. The lucky cat figurine Ray bought her to celebrate her graduation; the rock they brought back from the beach in Santa Barbara because it was perfectly circular with a hole through the middle and Ray had thought it looked like a raspberry Lifesaver.

Without warning, Stella slides off the armchair and wraps her arms around him, landing in a damp, sobbing heap at his side.

He folds himself around her so easily, just like the other times she’s cried on his shoulder, and carefully, because he doesn’t know anymore what is and isn’t permitted, he strokes her hair. “Hey, hey,” he murmurs. “Come on, Stel, don’t cry.”

“Why the hell not? Look at us – I’m sorry, Ray. I’m so, so sorry.”

She dissolves into fresh tears, and he holds her tightly for what is, he supposes, the very last time. “I know,” he lies. “It’s okay. Everything’ll be okay.”

“No, it won’t,” she says, her voice muffled by his sweater. 

No, he thinks. No, everything won’t be alright. Everything will be shitty and broken forever, because we’re Ray and Stella, except now – we’re not. 

So he cries as well, and they sit on the living room floor until sometime after his ass loses all feeling. Eventually she draws away from his embrace, smiles, dabs at her eyes with a Kleenex, and declares the truce over. 

After that Ray goes back to packing boxes and Stella disappears into the kitchen to call herself a cab.


	2. After the Divorce

It’s rare, these days, for there to be a free afternoon – hell, even a spare half hour would be nice – for Ray to really get some quality time alone with his thoughts. He’d be the first to admit he's not the most reflective of guys. Quietude doesn’t come naturally to Vecchios; Ray grew up in a household where wanting to be left alone was a sign of getting ideas above your station and earned you a slap upside the head. But he’s known Fraser to spend whole days sitting quietly beneath an open sky, communing with nature, or whatever, and by comparison Ray’s desire to take ten minutes for himself seems modest and not at all unreasonable.

So, he’s pulled up in the Riv in front of the house, and instead of getting out, he’s sitting, thinking. Or, not thinking. Really, he’s just staring at the front windows, watching silhouettes pass back and forth rapidly behind the drawn curtains, savouring the peace and quiet.

Fraser’s coming to dinner. It’s his birthday and someone – Frannie – found this out by leafing through the personnel files, and then extended the invitation without running it past Ray first. Ma Vecchio loves a birthday; she’s gone all out, elbow-deep in flour by the time Ray left for the precinct that morning. Ray’s pretty sure he needs to let out his belt a few notches in anticipation.

In twenty minutes, he needs to drive over to Racine and pick up Fraser. He’s under instructions to dress nice, and Ray can just imagine the squeals when he sets foot through the front door in blue denim and a button-down. Frannie likes a guy in uniform, but she likes him better out of it. Ray sighs; he’s an asshole.

He loves his family. He loves that Fraser loves his family, and that they dote on him like the Gigantor son they never had. There’s just something about bringing someone round, and having it not be a girlfriend or a fiancée or a wife, that makes Ray feel like the butt of the universe’s joke. He’s thirty-five, for Christ’s sake, and although he’s supposedly head of the household, it’s still and always will be his Ma’s house, and he’ll always feel twelve years old, asking: “Hey, Ma! Can my friend Benny stay for dinner?”

And Fraser, goddamnit, is so nice and charming and loath to offend, that he’ll let Frannie take his arm and guide him to the seat right next to hers, and he’ll spend the whole evening telling Ma how much he loves her cannoli, and listening bemusedly to Tony’s dissection of the latest Sox game, and letting Tony Junior ask him every question under the sun about fishing. And the end result will be that Ray, who was, after all, the one who brought someone home, will sit on his own, playing man of the house and carving the porchetta, and won’t get a look in the whole evening.

After the divorce – and this is how Ray knows he’s in a bad place. Thinking about the divorce is never a sign of him being in a healthy state of mind - after the divorce, in the brief respite between the final, plate-smashing argument, and the ignominy of dragging his carcass back to the Vecchio family home, Ray had found himself alone in a three bedroom townhouse, with nothing but the view of Lake Michigan to keep him sane. Made a guy think about what it actually means to be alone, and that’s how he _knows_ this isn’t just about the loneliness. The heat and misery in the pit of his stomach, watching Frannie paw at Fraser like he’s a piece of meat in a Mountie suit; that’s nothing to do with loneliness at all.

There’s a knock at the window. Ray raises his head from the steering wheel and finds Maria peering in at him, Tony and the kids goggling at him behind her.

“Ray! You passed out, or something? What’s the matter?”

With a sigh he opens the car door and climbs out, making some noise about just being tired and needing a decent night’s sleep. Maria isn’t convinced; this will result in Ma trying to feed him extra portions and grilling him later, when everyone else has gone to bed. They go inside, and Frannie is already wearing the lowest-cut dress she can get away with, without Ma sending her back upstairs to change.

Ray heads upstairs to shower.


	3. Confession

After the cute trick with the lingerie, after getting herself temporarily barred from Father Behan’s church, and after letting everyone believe she slept with Fraser, Francesca Vecchio decides it’s about time to think about changing her ways.

“Father, I’ve behaved... immodestly. Towards a – a guy.”

The silence from the other side of the confessional is, to Frannie’s mind, unnecessarily judgemental. “Would this have anything to do with the Mountie?”

“Well, I don’t know why you’d automatically assume that – ”

Father Behan clears his throat.

“Yes, fine. It was the Mountie. I just – I might have taken things too far. And now Ray won’t speak to me.”

Father Behan says nothing, and suddenly the words just come tumbling out, spilling out of Frannie's mouth like truth-telling is contagious and too much time around Fraser has left her with a severe case of embarrassing honesty. She tells him about the looks Elaine's started throwing her, like she's embarrassed on her behalf, and about Fraser's confused, wary good manners. She tells him about the lie, and Ray's cold, eviscerating rage.

“I mean, _God_ – sorry, Father – why do I always put myself through this? Ray says guys like Fraser don’t marry girls like me, like he doesn’t know how _great_ marriage turned out for me the last time. I don’t wanna _marry_ him, it’s just – Fraser’s so... _great_. He’s kind and he’s considerate, and he holds doors open for me, and he’s just so _nice_ , you know? He’d be so good to me, and I want that, just once in my life, I wanna be with a guy who treats me like I'm worth it. Is that too much to ask?”

She gets home later that night to a dark, quiet house. The lights are off in the porch and she has to fumble in her bag for the key, slipping it into the lock as quietly as she can. She toes off her shoes, and is about to tip-toe up the stairs when, jumping nearly out of her skin, she realises she isn’t alone.

Ray's sitting at the dinner table, just the one lamp casting long shadows and making it look like a scene from some Mob movie. It doesn't help that he's all in black, hands clasped under his chin, face like a funeral.

He looks up at her as she steps through the door.

"Where you been?"

"Church." She takes off her gloves, peeling them off one-by-one. "Not that it's any of your business."

“I’m sorry, Frannie.”

It takes the wind out of her sails, makes her huff out a surprised breath and sit down heavily on one of the dining chairs. She's been gearing up to defend herself and now it seems she doesn't have to.

Ray looks like hell. He's got pink around his eyes, like he's been pushing his thumbs into the sockets. He's looking up at her still and for a moment she wants to rage at him for pulling this shit, for saying all those terrible things and then imagining that contrition will make them unsaid; she remembers what it was like to have Pop's moods blowing around the house putting everyone on edge, leaving everyone walking on eggshells so as not to set him off.

“It wasn't fair," she says. "I didn't deserve it."

He hangs his head, face hidden by the shadows the lamp is casting, and she’s glad she can’t see his expression. “I know. I know; I’m sorry, Frannie. I just – I saw red.”

"You think that makes it ok?"

"No."

He pushes his knuckles into his eyes, his mouth a thin, unhappy line. Suddenly she's losing it, like she hasn't this whole time, holding it together in Father Behan's confessional and all the way home on the ‘L’ train. They sit there for a while, neither of them saying anything.

"I shouldn't have spoken to you that way, Frannie," he says, eventually. "I just – why’d you make up something like that? Why’d you want people to think that about you?”

“What, that I’d sleep with a guy? Jesus, Ray, it’s the 1990s, people hook up.”

“Yeah, well, I know those kinda guys. Those kinda guys are dicks.” He sighs. “You deserve better than that, you know?”

She leans over and presses a kiss to his cheek. “I know that.”

They smile at each other dopily and Ray reaches for the Kleenex on the sideboard, pushing them across the table towards her. She swipes at her eyes and hopes her mascara hasn’t run all the way down to her chin.

Ray blows his nose and shoves his chair back from the table. “Listen, uh. I gotta go out, got another apology to make."

Just before he shrugs on his jacket and makes his escape, Frannie stops him with a hand on his arm.

“Ray.” She catches his hand and peers at him with a look copied straight from Ma Vecchio, the one that says ‘You better tell me right now what kind of trouble you’re in’. “Even Tony’s noticed you’ve been quiet, and he’s as observant as fire hydrant.”

“Nah, Frannie, it's nothing.”

“You’re sure? It’s nothing... to do with the house, or the mortgage?”

Suddenly Ray sees her, fifteen years old and crouched at the top of the stairs while he and Pop yelled at one another about the gambling and the card game debts.

“Jesus Christ, Frannie.” He pulls her into a hard hug, wrapping his arms round her like he hasn’t since she told him the truth about the bruises, and how Antonio was the one giving them to her. “I swear, it’s nothing; the Lieu’s riding us hard, that’s all. I swear, there is nothing for you or Ma to worry about.”

“Sure,” she says, muffled by his jacket. “Okay. You’d better swear that’s the truth, or I’ll kick your ass so hard. You’re not the only grown-up in this family, anymore, doofus.”

“Yeah, sure, _doofus_. I swear, everything’s fine. Look, I gotta go.”

“Sure, go. And – tell Fraser sorry again, from me.”


	4. Victoria

“You’re lucky to have a friend like Ray.”

Fraser nods, absent-mindedly. “I think he was ready to kick down the door by the time I answered.”

Victoria smiles, because Fraser is probably the world’s dumbest open book. It should hurt her more to needle him; it should have hurt him more to turn her over to the cops, so doesn’t that make them even? “He must really care about you.”

“He’s very... protective.”

“What do you need protection from?”

Fraser smiles. “When I came down here looking for my father’s killer, I’d never spent much time outside the Territories. Without Ray’s help, I would have quickly fallen foul of the city’s particular ways of doing things.”

“So he’s looked out for you?”

“Ray’s been a very good friend.”

She turns to look at him and the sheets wrap around her like she’s the lead in some romantic comedy. She’s careful to keep her tone neutral, her voice light with innocent concern. “You don’t sound so convinced.”

“Oh, no, I’m sure Ray is a good friend. The best. It’s just that certain things have begun to come between us.” Fraser pauses and licks at the corner of his bottom lip, eyes uncertain. “His sister, for one.”

“He warned you off her?”

“Ah, no, not at all. He warned her not to continue to attempt to seduce me. He thought I might have slept with her, and he didn’t know I could hear – and, actually, that I could see – their conversation. It’s really a very long story.”

“I’m interested.” Victoria draws herself onto one elbow. “So what did he say to her?”

“Oh, he laid down the law – quite forcefully.” He frowns, as though recalling it is bewildering. “I’ve never seen him like that, certainly not with a member of his family, they’re very close and – ”

“You think maybe he was jealous?”

“Oh, no, Ray goes on lots of dates, I’m sure he wouldn’t begrudge Francesca her own happiness, if she were to find it with the right person.”

“No,” Victoria shakes her head, her tone slow and deliberate; sometimes, she doesn’t know how Fraser can be so unsuspecting and survive at all in this world. “I meant jealous of her being with you.”

For a long moment, Fraser stares at her. He blinks slowly and colour rises in his cheeks. “Oh. I see. I – I hadn’t thought that to be a – a possibility; it hasn’t ever been apparent.” He ducks his head, momentarily avoiding her gaze. “I really don’t think that’s the issue.”

She smiles. “I guess we’ll see.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs, swinging her legs off the side of the bed and letting the sheets pool around her waist. “I’m not his sister. I’m just some woman from your past who you ran into in a diner.”

“Victoria,” Fraser says in that quiet, sincere tone that she so detests. “You’re – you’re so much more than that. I told Ray, a little while ago, about the pursuit and our time in the snow-storm.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“He was asleep at the time, so it’s doubtful he remembers much of it, but he knows how important you are to me. I’m sure he understands.”

She hums and lets her smile turn sharp and cruel. Fraser flinches, just barely, attempting to hide his confusion by bending to pick up his jacket from the floor, and she can practically _hear_ the frantic effort it takes him to rationalise, ignore, explain. Christ, it’s Pavlovian.

“We’ll see.” She takes the jacket from him and slips it on, leaning up to kiss him. “Do you want breakfast, or shall I bring it to you in bed?”

He pushes her hair over her shoulder, exposing the way the jacket hangs open and reveals the outline of the curve of her breast. “I really do have to go to work at some point.”

She kisses him again, and guides his hands beneath the red serge, standing on her toes to make them more of a height. “You can try.”

With a groan, Fraser capitulates. He always does.

-

Victoria is something Ray doesn’t have words spiteful enough to describe. She ruins Ray’s boys’ night, she tries to dispose of Dief like he’s a piece of garbage, she inveigles her way into Ray’s home, puts his entire family in danger, and all of it pales into insignificance, because Fraser would have run away with her, and Ray had had to shoot him to save him from himself.

Ray’s spent a lot of his life feeling like a failure for all the things he hasn’t got, all the things he never had, lost, couldn’t get back again, and then it turned out all he was looking for in the first place was a guy – a _guy_ , and excuse Ray if it took him a minute to catch up with himself on that one – who’d run down the street after him half dressed to apologise for a missed poker night, and dive into Lake Michigan to rescue him from the trunk of a stolen car.

“You’re a grade-A mug, Raimondo,” says Ray Vecchio sr., sounding smug and vindicated.

“Can it, Pop,” Ray replies, too tired to argue.

The room is otherwise silent, apart from the hiss of the ventilator and the rhythmic beep of the ECG.


	5. This Thing with Benny

In his room at the hospital, in between spying on the aerobics class across the way with the help of Fraser’s binoculars and enduring physical therapy sessions with Kennedy, Ray’s been spending a lot of his time in conversation with Diefenbaker. It’s been great; he doesn’t answer back, he certainly doesn’t interrupt every five minutes with smart little asides about Ray’s lack of understanding of the mating rituals of North-West continental elk, and as long as Ray keeps him supplied with baked goods, he occasionally lays his head on Ray’s knee and looks at him with something like sympathy. Ray’s desperate; he’ll take what he can get.

“I was going with her, you know,” Benny had said, like it was something Ray had really needed to hear.

“What is this?” he voices aloud. “Do I got a great big sign on my forehead sayin’ ‘Ray Vecchio just loves that feeling of getting kicked in the guts, right after you put your heart on your sleeve and watch it get shot to pieces’?”

Diefenbaker is unhelpfully silent, his expression managing to fall somewhere between scepticism and pity. He watches with avid interest as Ray tears off a piece of bagel and tosses it into the air, snaps his jaws around it, and then lays down on the floor by Ray’s feet. He rests his head on his paws and whuffs softly when Ray’s hand slides into the soft fur behind his ears.

“You know I shouldn’t be feeding you this. I bet Fraser’s got you on some high-protein recovery diet.”

Diefenbaker snorts his disgust and snatches the last of the bagel.

“When we get outta here, Dief, I’m done with it. This – _thing_ with Benny. I’m drawing a line in the sand: Ray Vecchio is moving on. We’ll go up to the middle of nowhere, fix up the goddamn cabin, and when we get back, it’ll be business as usual. No more mooning around like a jackass.”

Diefenbaker butts his head into Ray’s hand and whines.

“That’s all the bagel I got, sorry, pooch. Hey, here comes Fraser, this can be our secret, huh?”

-

And, you know, for the most part it works.

Irene hits hard, like she always does. She leaves a hole right through him that no amount of bouncing Frankie’s head off the basketball court is gonna fix.

And then Ray crawls back out of the pit, and there is Fraser, right where Ray left him. Steadfast and gentle with him and so goddamned concerned, and Ray falls right back into the familiar rhythm of it, in that slow, warm way he used to. Like he’d ever fallen out; like it was even possible to stop loving Fraser, once you realised you’d started. There are sharper edges, now; things they don’t talk about. Victoria, for one, and Irene, for two. And there’s the way Fraser looks at him sometimes, like Ray’s the dangerous one, and Fraser’s the one without the roadmap. The tension isn’t a negative thing. It stops Ray from agreeing to stay over after stakeouts, and it cuts down on the times he feels himself giving in to the urge to lean into the solicitous hand Fraser places on his shoulder when he’s tired and frustrated part way through a case.

There’s something about their impending collision that’s starting to feel inevitable. At least this way, Ray gets to control the speed of their descent.


	6. Buddies

He gets the call on a Wednesday morning, right after he’s showered and put on the coffee so it’s cool enough for him to knock it back and still be on time to swing by Fraser’s and offer him a lift.

Afterwards, he sits in the car outside the Consulate for longer than is necessary while Diefenbaker makes sorrowful eyes at him and waits for him to be able to articulate the very particularly awful way he’s feeling. Fraser’s already inside, beginning his day without an inkling that Ray’s sitting there talking to the wolf, and having to put a hand over his mouth to stop himself making pathetic, involuntary sounds of distress. Fraser’s heading up to Yellowknife for a leave of absence in two days’ time; by the time he returns, Ray will be gone.

“You know how it is,” he says, while Diefenbaker looks at him solemnly. “You get divorced, kiss goodbye to your sweet house on the lake, move back in with the folks. You want to prove to yourself your existence so far hasn’t been one big waste of time, so you sign up with the Feds. You figure they’ll call you up one day soon, tell you they want you down in Reno, or something, and that’s cool, because there’s nothing else in your life worth living for. Only they don’t, and something good comes along – something _great –_ ”

Diefenbaker whines and puts a paw on Ray’s arm. Ray drags his fingers through the thick hair at the scruff of his neck and has to overcome the urge to bury his face in it for a while.

“That’s why you gotta take care of him, Dief,” he says, “cos I’m not gonna get a chance to explain why I ain’t here anymore.” He pauses to wipe his eyes with the cuff of his shirt sleeve. “Jesus. Some job I’d do, anyway.”

-

A couple of times, inside his first week of taking up as Ray Vecchio, Ray Kowalski has cause to wonder exactly what kinda set-up he and Fraser are supposed to have going on here, anyhow. The way he and Fraser are treated like a they’re a two-man hand grenade, as though no one can tell yet whether the whole thing is going to blow up in their faces, and Fraser’s closed-off, secretive silence, when they do the most innocuous things, like going to a particular diner, or walking past the end of a particular rubbish-strewn alley. Ray’s had just about enough of Fraser’s wistful sighs as he gazes upon yet another indistinguishable pile of garbage. 

“Alright, you’re gonna have to tell me,” he says, keeping his eyes on the menu in front of him. “What exactly is the deal, here?”

Fraser says nothing, so Ray sighs and wonders how he can rephrase without setting off the Mountie’s propriety alarms.

“We’re buddies, right?” he says quietly, as though _duh_ , that wasn’t the point of him being here, sitting in some diner playing the getting-to-know-you game.

Fraser nods and looks at him, finally, the polite, reticent smile firmly in place. “Yes. Ray Vecchio and I – we were the best of friends.”

Ray nods, and looks down at his arm in its sling, feels the pull of the dressing around his chest. “Hey,” he says, and it comes out more gentle than he was anticipating. “Quit talking about me like I’m dead, Fraser. This – ” he indicated himself, “is a temporary thing.”

Fraser looks at him like he’s said something surprising. He draws one finger up the side of his cup before answering. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I’m hardly helping the situation, am I? This must be making things difficult for you.”

“You’re doing fine,” Ray says, though he has the feeling Fraser had been telling him something important and he’s gone and missed it.

Fraser smiles, and Ray is reminded of those cheesy pop songs about someone’s smile lighting up a room. Not in a gay way, or anything, just an objective observation that Fraser’s 100-watt smile, when he fixes you with it and really turns it on, is kinda like the sun.

He stands up and drains his coffee – sweet, chocolatey drink of the gods – and turns to head back outside to the car. The wolf, who had been curled up under the table, slides around his legs and looks up at him expectantly.

He blinks and opens the door. With a soft whuff, Diefenbaker trots outside ahead of him and sits patiently by the back door of the car. “No, no,” Ray calls, “after _you_!”

“Ray,” Fraser says, putting on his hat. “There really is very little point in expecting a wolf to understand sarcasm. Thank you kindly.”

So Ray holds the door for a wolf and for someone he’s beginning to think of as pretty sneaky and passive-aggressive for a Canadian. And Fraser, just by smiling and tipping his hat at a woman on the sidewalk, nearly causes a three-car pile-up.

It’s clear, then, that it’s obviously going to be a _long_ assignment.

-

**Las Vegas, Nevada**

Today, for the first time in weeks, Ray Vecchio finds himself alone in his – in _Armando’s_ – office. Of the many unpleasant aspects of this undercover job, he hadn’t anticipated the lack of privacy to be the worst. Between the heavies and the girls and the hangers-on, Armando Langoustini is _never_ alone; it makes Ray wonder whether he’d been the kid in school who surrounded himself with thugs and got other kids beat up for their lunch money to make himself feel better about the fact that his daddy never told him he loved him.

It's been a bad day. Armando Langoustini’s suits fit just a little too well, and his fancy food’s starting to be a bit too easy to swallow. The pieces of himself are getting more difficult to keep straight in his head and Ray needs someone to remember for him, because he can’t afford himself the luxury, not when the wrong word, the wrong look, the wrong action, could end with fifteen bullets in his chest and the whole operation fucked up beyond repair.

He picks up his phone. He knows it’s tapped because he’d placed the bug himself, one of his first tasks on the job. He cradles the handset against his ear, listens to the dial-tone and the hum of static. If he wanted, he could dial the number the Feds had had him learn, get them to pull his sorry ass outta here, run all the way back to Chicago and his old life, his family, and Fraser – _goddamnit._ He could call Fraser. He could dial through to the Canadian Consulate and have Turnbull put him through – have Turnbull pull Fraser in off the goddamn street, if he’s on sentry duty. If Ray concentrates he can _hear_ Fraser’s voice, imagine the soft, tentative way it would curl around his name. ‘ _Ray?’_

_‘Yeah, Benny, it’s me.’_

_‘Ray, it’s good to hear your voice.’_

He closes his eyes, rests his forehead on the heel of his hand. Dial-tone and static. _Goddamnit, Vecchio, make a decision._

A knock at the office door and he slams the phone back into its cradle.

Tony Giotto’s head appears round the door. “Salamander’s in the car, boss.”

Ray Vecchio recedes and Armando Langoustini slips around him like an expensive leather coat. “Get him in here.”


	7. Geology

Kowalski knows guys who’ve gone deep with the Mob, and after a couple weeks of immersive training they hadn’t been able to remember their own names. He gets cold shivers when he thinks about it.

“Hey, Frase,” he says, “it’s an icebox in here. My nose is growing stalagmites.”

He gets to his feet and goes over to the window. Who leaves a window cracked in this neighbourhood, anyway? Suddenly, he has visions of Fraser waking up one morning to find even the minimal crap he keeps in the apartment gone, asleep in his long-johns on the bare wooden floor.

“Anyone ever tell you about basic home security? You live on Racine, you keep the windows nailed shut.”

“I like the fresh air, Ray,” Fraser says, coming in from the kitchen bearing two steaming mugs. “And your nose would have been growing stalagtites: they hang on tight from the roof of a cave, or in this case, the end of your nose, whereas a stalagmite grows up from the floor.”

“Whatever,” Ray says, taking his coffee. He digs around in his pocket for Smarties and drops them in. “And, you know, you’re probably the only person in history to call the air out there ‘fresh’.”

“Admittedly, it took a little getting used to, but after a while even the smell of burning automobiles becomes quite therapeutic.”

Ray looks at him over the rim of his mug, and Fraser’s mouth does that turn-me-up, turn-me-down kinda smile like he thinks he’s said something amusing. Ray snorts and rolls his eyes. “I bet Canada has its own car-jackers and junkies,” he says. “In Vancouver, or wherever, I bet they coulda showed you a real good time.”

Fraser nods slowly. “I’ve never been to Vancouver. I visited Ottawa once as part of a training programme, and of course I was briefly stationed in Moose Jaw, but that’s the extent of my experience of Canada’s larger urban centres. I doubt the ‘culture shock’ is any worse in Chicago, than it would have been in any of the larger Canadian cities.”

For a second, Ray thinks he’s heard Fraser say something halfway derogatory about the country of his birth. Which is insane, because as far as Ray’s concerned, Fraser is 250 pounds of maple leaves and snow mobiles; cut him in half and the words to _O Canada_ are probably etched on the insides of his insides, surrounded by a thousand tiny hearts.

He snorts. “Way to throw yourself in at the deep end, Frase. Chicago ain’t exactly the way to ease yourself into the whole urban lifestyle.”

“I think perhaps it’s been better this way.”

Ray nods slowly. “You mean, if you’d been packed off to Toronto, or something, you’d have been even more bummed out because all the shitheads and the losers would have been Canadian too?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Ray is thoughtful, considering how huge a deal it must have been, walking down the I90 and winding up in the middle of the windy city. “Well, I’m glad you’re here, man. Geez, though, Frase – next time, make life easy on yourself.”

“At the time of coming here, I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

“No, man. I know.” Ray leans back in his chair, suddenly feeling generous. “Hey, you wanna watch the game?”

“I wasn’t aware there was a fixture tonight, Ray.”

Ray’s eyes narrow. “Yeah, right. If you start up with that weird-ass ‘sweep’ thing you and Turnbull do, though, I ain’t joining in.”

“That’s curling, Ray. This is hockey.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Fraser is smiling so hard and so wide, Ray’s pretty sure he’s gonna end up sunburned from the other side of the room. He turns to the T.V., sticks his feet on the heap of junk Fraser calls a coffee table, and bathes in the rare feeling of being a decent human being.


	8. The Thaw

Ray Kowalski always knew he’d make a damned good detective. He doesn’t just notice the details, the nuances – that’s what Fraser calls them, when they’re working a case and he’s licking substances he’s picked up off the sidewalk - he notices the big, honking neon signs as well. And that takes skill. Ray Kowalski can see the wood for the trees, and he can walk out of a bathroom in a Las Vegas hotel and recognise exactly what’s going on in front of him.

So when Vecchio meets Stella and decides he’s in love, Ray can’t even bring himself to start throwing punches, it’s so fucking ridiculous.

“But it’s _Vecchio_!” he rages, over lunch at the diner. “And _Stella_!”

Fraser’s expression gets kinda tight and unhappy – and when did Ray get so adept at reading Fraser’s mood just by staring at his goddamn mouth? – but he says nothing, just stares at the menu so hard Ray’s surprised it doesn’t burst into flames.

Outside, it’s a typical Chicago winter day, raining and cold and gray. It’s five weeks since they returned from Yellowknife, having handed Muldoon over to the RCMP, and Ray’s still off duty thanks to Welsh having noticed all the leave he hasn’t been taking and ordering some down-time. He would have pointed out that the reason he doesn’t take leave is because he spends it either staring at the walls of his apartment or sitting in a diner with Fraser, but he doesn’t need Welsh’s pity. So here he is, sitting in a diner with Fraser, deciding whether to order mac and cheese or just a side of fries.

“We gotta get out of here, Frase,” he mutters, after a minute or so of silence.

Fraser looks at him and nods, and that’s that.

-

The Territories are... well, the Territories are wide and empty and cold. And white. Ray recalls with fondness the day they found that abandoned snow-plough halfway to Kittigazuit, because it broke up the monotony of the relentless arctic snowfields.

Sometimes, Ray has to acknowledge the depth of his own bullshit.

The Territories are wide and empty and cold. And beautiful. There’s a clean, sharp quality to every lung-full of air, and this bright, white light that blinds him every morning when he sticks his head out the tent, and he swears his brain feels clearer than it has in years. He’s thinking better, thinking quicker, than he remembers doing since he was a kid. Fraser’s probably congratulating himself on weaning Ray off coffee and chocolate, but Ray barely even notices their loss, when he looks out over the landscape and sees nothing at all looking back at him.

_This is it,_ he thinks. _This is what all those self-help books mean about ‘finding yourself’. I’ve been to goddamned Tuktoyaktuk, but I’ve never been to me._

He says none of this to Fraser, but after a couple weeks it gets old even making the usual miserable noises about the cold and the food and the traveling. It’s easier just to let a comfortable silence settle between them and let the miles pass by, Fraser smiling that beatific smile, and Ray gaping openly at the sheer majesty of the landscape they’re passing through.

-

They’re nearly at Kugluktuk before Ray starts to take an interest in maps. He’s always figured maps are Fraser’s department, along with compasses, little tiny stoves, treatment for hypothermia, and all those other survival skills. Ordinarily, he’d feel kinda bad for kicking back on the sled, or in the tent, or with his fishing pole at the ice hole, while Fraser does all the work towards keeping them alive, but if there’s one thing the Territories have taught him, it’s to know when to quit being proud and just _let Fraser handle it_. Besides, it keeps Fraser happy – or, at least, it keeps Fraser busy, which seems to be what he wants right now.

“Hey, Frase,” he says over his shoulder. “I think this ice hole’s all out of fish.”

“Aglu,” Fraser corrects, tying a complicated knot in the dog line. “‘This _aglu_ is out of fish.’ And I find that hard to believe, Ray, as you are actually fishing the Arctic Ocean.”

“Well, they ain’t biting for me, so unless you wanna freeze your ass off trying to catch something, looks like it’s pemmican for dinner again.”

Fraser grins. “I knew you’d grow to appreciate it.”

“Is that what you think that look is on my face while I’m eating it?” He stands, shaking out the stiffness from his legs, and stomps over to join Fraser by the fire. “Hey, give me a look at the map, wouldya?”

Fraser looks up at him as though he’s been asked to hand over the hunting knife and let Ray take care of dinner. Ray folds his arms defensively.

“What, I can’t take an interest, now?”

From the smile that blooms across Fraser’s face, you’d think Ray had declared his intention to build himself an igloo and take up throat-singing. “No, no,” Fraser says, shuffling sideways to make room for Ray to join him on the sled. “By all means, Ray, I’m – gratified you’ve developed an interest.”

Ray nods and takes the map with exaggerated dignity. He doesn’t need to look at it to know he hasn’t the first clue where they are, or which way’s up. North, whatever.

“This is Kugluktuk,” says Fraser, pointing to a section of the map more heavily populated by what even Ray can work out are supposed to be buildings. “And this was our starting point; you’ll notice the course of the Peel River, here.”

Ray nods, peering at the squiggly line Fraser traces with one gloved finger. “I know, I know. So, uh, where are we, now, again?”

So that’s how it goes: Fraser teaches Ray all the stuff kids who got to join the Scouts learned for free on some crappy orienteering weekend in seventh grade, and Ray starts to think that maps are actually pretty cool. He also starts to realise how far it is to King William Island and back and how vast the Northern Territories really are, and how little time he has left before his leave is up.

-

They get back to Tuktoyaktuk as the snow melt is just starting to change the look of the landscape, pricking the expanse of white with features, here and there: a stand of trees; a lone building, its roof silhouetted against a grey, turbulent sky. Ray’s leave is up in a week and a half, and then he has to go back to a job in Chicago that he barely remembers, booked on the flight from Yellowknife on the 14th.

Fraser insists that before he leaves, there’s one last thing he absolutely has to see. Ray’s beyond arguing, at this point, having made his peace at some point in the middle of the snowfield with the fact that he doesn’t much care how Fraser suggests they spend their time, as long as he gets to bask in the majesty of all this goddamn nature just that little bit longer.

This is why they end up heading back to Tuktoyaktuk early; Fraser has something to show him, and he says it’s a couple of hours’ drive the other side of town. So they hire a pickup that’s fitted with the heaviest snow-chains Ray’s ever seen, and Fraser drives them along the road to Inuvik, and Ray’s happy to lean his head against the window and watch the scenery roll by. They drive past Inuvik and turn off the highway, and then Fraser’s in his element, because they’re off-roading over boulders and scree and through scrubby firs and it almost occurs to Ray to hold onto something, because Fraser’s got a devilish look in his eye that Ray has long-since learned to fear.

They pull up behind a line of trees and Fraser is practically vibrating with excitement as he urges Ray out of the car and over uneven ground towards the tree line. Ray scrambles to keep up, and he knows Fraser can hear him cursing and is choosing to ignore it, and it doesn’t even make him furious anymore – and then they push through the undergrowth and under the branches of the firs and Fraser stops, abruptly, and turns to Ray with the biggest grin on his face that Ray thinks he’s ever been privileged to witness.

Open before them is an expanse of river; it’s frozen over, still, but Ray can spot the places in the ice where he wouldn’t choose to walk. Fraser’s taught him well, he thinks, a little smugly.

“Now, we wait,” says Fraser, sitting himself down on a rock, and he absolutely refuses to be drawn on what it is they’re waiting for, so in the end Ray gives up asking and sits himself down, too.

The air is clear, in the same way it always has been on the snow-field, but there’s something indefinable on the breeze that makes Ray glad they’re there. The fact that it’s a breeze – still cold, but not about to freeze your nose off your face – is refreshing. It’s almost as if he can smell the change in the seasons, or some shit, but he’s not about to make himself look foolish by saying so.

“Ray,” Fraser says, after some interminable amount of time has passed. “Listen.”

At first, Ray has no idea what he’s listening for. There’s birdsong, somewhere in the trees behind them, and that’s a welcome change from the noiselessness of the tundra, but beyond that just the silence of the frozen river. But then, low, like the rumble of an airplane engine, he hears it.

He watches, astounded, as the ice on the river begins to break up, splintering into miniature icebergs that roll and tumble in the current and then are swept away by the torrent; where minutes before there was ice, there’s a seething, roiling river creature, and the shallow valley is reverberating with the sudden shock of its roar.

He turns to Fraser, mouth agape, and Fraser has the audacity to flash him a smug smile. Ray forgives him, because when he speaks, it’s with reverence, even if he has to raise his voice a little to be heard.

“Snowmelt. This is a tributary of the Mackenzie River. I knew the thaw was coming, and thought you might like to witness this before you go.”

Ray doesn’t bother to demand to know how Fraser knew exactly what day this would happen; he knows, by now, that it’ll get him a cryptic, poetic story about the Inuit, so he shuts up and gapes at the river rushing by them. It’s as though all the weeks of silence, of nothing but the empty space of the snow and his own head, have been cracked open and discarded; it’s like being reborn.

He tips his head back and, without putting any further thought into it, lets out a whoop that’s swallowed almost immediately by the noise of the river. He does it again, and then Fraser, to his surprise, tips back his head and lets out something that sounds a lot like a wolf’s howl. Dief, at his feet, joins in.

They do some more hollering, the three of them, Ray and Fraser grinning at each other foolishly, until Ray’s exhausted and happy and thinks he could quite contentedly sit on this rock at the edge of this river for the rest of his days.

“We need to get back,” says Fraser, after a while, sounding regretful, the smile still lingering around his eyes. “The day’s still short.”

-

On the drive back, Ray rests his head against the window, again. He can’t rationalise what’s happened, beyond the fact that his chest feels lighter, and his head feels like it’s five sizes too big, but in the best possible way; expansive, and free.

When they pull into Tuktoyaktuk, it’s dark, and the lights on the general store are casting an orange glow over the compacted snow of the parking lot.

They haul themselves up the steps to the cabin Fraser’s rented for them; it’s a tiny, timber-built place, but it has a stove and a couple of bunks, and after weeks of the tent and the bed rolls, it feels like sheer, outrageous luxury. Ray cannot wait to peel off at least two of his outer layers and indulge himself in some toasting time in front of the stove. He’s already imagining the blood in his toes unfreezing for the first time since he left Chicago with something like anticipatory bliss.

Just inside the door, as though it’s been tucked underneath it in their absence, is a letter. Actually, when Ray stoops to pick it up, it’s more like a note; a folded piece of paper with ‘Constable Benton Fraser’ written on the outside of it.

“Hey, Frase – this came for you.”

Fraser, who has already begun taking off his jacket and boots, blinks, and then takes it from him with something like eagerness. He unfolds it, reads it once, then a second time, his eyes scanning it as though examining it for clues.

“Well?” Ray demands.

“It’s a telegram,” Fraser says, glancing up at him. His eyes are shining in a way Ray thinks might actually be painful to look at head on; it’s like someone filled Fraser up with hope and it’s spilling out of him without his permission. “From Ray.”

Ray tries not to fixate on the fact that he didn’t know telegrams were still a thing. “Vecchio? What’s he want?”

Fraser is gazing at the paper as though it’s turned to crystal in his hands, reminding Ray of that shitty postcard. ‘Cold down here, heat me up’ – code my ass, who in the hell would write fruity stuff like that to Fraser, of all people. Fraser, who wouldn’t recognise a come-on at five paces if you stripped it naked and stuck a rose between its teeth.

“I left a message, saying he could reach me – reach us in Tuktoyaktuk. He’s given me a telephone number. I – would you excuse me, Ray?” Fraser starts tugging on jacket and hat and boots, and strides towards the door, the note clutched in his hand like it’s his own personal life preserver. “There’s a telephone at the store, I’ll be back shortly.”

Ray watches him go and tries not to let all the good feeling from the river and the freedom of hollering at the sky like a pack of wolves drain out of him. If ever he’s had a bad feeling about anything, it’s Vecchio snapping his fingers and Fraser running out of the door like he’s just been told it's raining dollars. If Ray’s been making the most of the time on the sled to sift through the baggage he’s been dragging around with him all these years, then Fraser’s been doing the same; they haven’t mentioned it, but the faraway look in Fraser’s eyes when they’ve both been staring into the fire while a fish pops and sizzles on its makeshift spit has been enough to clue him in.

He'd thought – he’d hoped – that he’d be leaving Fraser in decent enough shape; that the moment by the river had been catharsis for him, as well. That Fraser would have felt his shoulders a little lighter, after howling at the sky for a while. And now Vecchio calls and it’s like watching Fraser shoot himself in the face in slow-motion.

Ray sighs and decides he’ll put his fire-building skills to use. He’s cold and the sooner he gets the stove lit, the sooner he can start to defrost.

-

Fraser trudges in a half hour later looking like someone took a fish knife and gutted him. He takes off the coat and the snow shoes and the hat, and sits down heavily on his bed, his elbows resting on his knees. Ray is used to Fraser looking like an overgrown boy-scout, chipper and dashing and always prepared; he’s never seen him look his age before, even though neither of them will see thirty-nine again and Fraser’s borne more than his share of trouble over the year-and-a-bit that Ray’s known him.

“Ray was ringing to tell me that he and Stella are married,” Fraser says, before Ray can enquire, in the tone of someone announcing a bereavement. “He apologises for not letting either of us know in advance, but by all accounts, events moved rather swiftly and there wasn’t time…”

He trails off and stares blankly at his hands where they hang between his knees. He looks like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

“ _Married_?”

Ray tries furiously to wrap his mind around this piece of information, because as far as he's concerned, Stella _Vecchio_ sounds like the universe’s biggest, ugliest, least funny joke.

“Three weeks ago,” Fraser confirms. “In Florida. I think I’d like to go to sleep now, Ray.”

Fraser begins taking off his boots like an automaton, his face as blank as Ray has ever seen it.

“Yeah, sure thing,” Ray says, because he doesn’t know what else _to say_ , and counselling his best friend through the marriage of his own ex-wife and his best friend’s not-quite-ex-anything is way outside his area of expertise. If they had some booze, he’d get Fraser really drunk, and encourage him to sob and yell and puke his guts out – Ray had mastered that fairly early on in the divorce proceedings, and learned that it left you feeling like shit, but that feeling like a different kind of shit for a while, for a different kind of reason, was sometimes a huge goddamn relief.

Instead, he strips down to his long-johns and socks and climbs into bed. Fraser does the same, silently, across the room. Ray’s about to open his mouth to say something clumsy and no doubt unwelcome when Fraser blows out the light in the hurricane lamp and they’re plunged into darkness apart from the glow of the stove, which Ray lit successfully, thank you very much. He doubts Fraser’s in the mood to congratulate him.

Ray lies on his back, listening to the crackle of burning wood, and tries very hard to decide whether his predominant emotion is dismay - because Stella’s married a different Ray, and Ray isn’t really even his name, but it still feels like the universe is laughing at him – or anger. On Stella’s behalf, on Fraser’s, because he knows what he saw when that hotel room door opened, and he’s one hundred percent certain whatever self-destructive spiral Vecchio’s on is going to end in tears for everybody concerned.

“I sometimes wonder how my father managed to convince my mother to marry him. He was not a man particularly suited to domestic harmony.”

Ray blinks, turning sideways in the dark as though he might be able to make out Fraser’s expression, hidden away in the darkness on the other side of the room.

“Gotta have inherited the Fraser charm from somewhere, right?” he replies, voice sounding rusty and clumsily jocular, like he’s hoping to raise a smile.

“I share many of the traits of my father’s personality,” Fraser agrees. “Unfortunately, many of them are the worst ones. Like him, I am dedicated to my job to the point of obsession. Like him, I’m capable of manipulating those around me to achieve the aims I believe to be the most expedient - ”

“Hey, hey – stop it, Frase. Everybody’s got foibles. That’s just called being human. No one can be the Six Million Dollar Mountie a hundred percent of the time, alright?”

Fraser subsides into silence, and Ray listens to his breathing coming unsteadily from across the cabin.

“You’re really messed up over this wedding thing, huh?” he asks softly.

Fraser sighs. “I’m sorry, Ray, I know how you feel about Stella, this must be far from easy for you – ”

“Yeah,” Ray mutters, his voice rough. “She’s a peach, best thing that ever happened to me, but I guess somewhere along the last five years I worked out how to move on, you know? This isn’t about me and Stella, Frase.”

Fraser is stubbornly silent and Ray sighs and shifts onto his back, staring in the direction of the ceiling. “Guess it means Vecchio won’t be coming back to Chicago anytime soon,” he says.

Fraser’s voice is blank and distant, like he’s giving Ray an update on the local weather. “No, I imagine married life and running his own business will keep Ray more than occupied in Florida. He told me he’s bought a bowling alley.”

Turning over and propping himself up on one elbow again, Ray peers at Fraser through the gloom, just about making out the steady rise and fall of his chest as he stares at the ceiling, too. “Thought he’d be back to stay, huh?”

It’s not exactly news; the gleam in Fraser’s eyes when that goddamn Vegas hotel room door swung open had been enough to clue Ray in. Suddenly, now, Fraser is ignoring him, letting his breathing mimic the slow, even rhythm of sleep. It doesn’t matter; his silence is confirmation that Ray was hard on the money. Still, he kinda feels a heel for saying it, throwing it softly across the space between the bunks with no warning, for Fraser to have no time to raise his defences. Perhaps he should start prefacing everything with ‘Brace, brace: this conversation is likely to contain talk of Vecchio, bail out at your first convenience’, or something, just to give Fraser a head-start.

-

Standing on the tarmac at Yellowknife, stamping his feet because he’s got his everyday civilian shoes on again and he forgot how inadequate their protection is against the arctic cold, even this far south, Ray tries one last time to persuade Fraser to accompany him back to Chicago.

“C’mon, Frase. I know you think you’re pretty self-sufficient, but even you gotta need people, too.”

Fraser smiles his best boy-scout smile and grasps Ray’s arm in reassurance. “Thank you for everything, Ray. Honestly, I will be fine.”

“Well, don’t go off finding Franklin all by yourself,” Ray says. He’s about to clamber up into the plane, and Fraser has his bag in one hand, like he can’t be trusted to carry it, now that they’re out of the wild and Ray’s just a schmuck from the city again. “That’s our mission, and I’m coming back to finish it.”

Fraser nods, guides him up the steps with one hand before handing over the bag, and tips his hat, as though Ray is a young lady he’s just escorted to her carriage after a goddamn ball. “Understood.”

The plane taxies and rises into a clear blue sky, and Ray watches Fraser shrink on the tarmac, waving his hat above his head until the plane banks left and takes him out of sight.


	9. Miami

Running a bowling alley is a lot like Ray imagined, and Florida is Florida; he has job satisfaction and a tan and no word of a lie, he couldn’t be happier. Stella is just – Ray doesn’t actually have words to describe Stella. He lies in bed at night, sometimes, and listens to her breathing slowly beside him, and wonders what he did to get so lucky. It’s a tight and panicky feeling, somewhere in the middle of his chest. The universe is never kind to Vecchios, and he sure as hell ain’t worked up the kind of karma to deserve this new, perfect life.

The best thing about Stella is that she doesn’t look at him like he’s a damaged imitation of the Ray Vecchio who existed before Vegas, and she doesn’t make a big deal out of the night terrors, just moves her pillows and the spare comforter to the couch in the living room and wakes him the next morning with a pot of coffee and a smile.

The best thing about Stella is that she doesn’t want to talk about how much she misses Chicago – and that’s great, because neither does Ray.


	10. Semaphore

Kowalski lands at O’Hare and gets a cab to his apartment. It’s the same as when he left, from the dusty navy blue drapes to the stain on the ceiling where upstairs’ bath overflowed that time and he had to go racing up the stairs and hammer on their door for them to shut the goddamn water off. He wakes the next morning at seven wondering why it’s so light, because it should be dark for at least another couple of hours, and why he can hear voices outside the tent.

Lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling, he lets the sounds of the city trickle in through the open window, the unfamiliar familiarity of car horns and traffic slipping over his skin like a shirt he’d forgotten he still owned.

-

The next thing he hears about Vecchio – and, really, he could have gone years without hearing anything else about Vecchio - is on his first day back at the 27. There are loose ends to tie up, case files to be signed off and a debrief with the Lieu, before he clears his desk and takes his cardboard box over to the 19. Halfway through the afternoon – he’s on his fifth strong coffee, and he’ll apologise to Fraser, who thinks he’s cured Ray of his caffeine habit, next time he calls, but this paperwork isn’t getting done without a little chemical motivation - Frannie appears, standing over his desk with another armful of files for his attention.

She dumps them on top of the files he’s already working on and cocks her hip against the side of his desk.

“How’s the Mountie?”

Ray rescues the report and jabs Frannie with his pen until she stops leaning on a sheaf of important photocopies. “Oh, how’s that for charming – not even going to ask how I am, before you start macking on Fraser?”

“How are _you_ , Stanley?”

“I’m great, Frannie, just great. I got ballpoints for fingers and I think the Lieu’s actually trying to kill me before I get a chance to leave.”

“Alright, alright. Jeez, you’d think no one ever wrote a report before.” She taps her nails against the side of his desk. “Has Fraser heard from Ray recently?”

Ray realises for the first time what those little tense lines at the corners of Frannie’s mouth mean, and that she’s come to him, of all people, for reassurance.

“How would I know?” he says, because he didn’t say it was a good choice on her part.

“You think you can ask him, next time you get a chance?”

Ray shrugs. “Sure, I can ask.” He thinks, grudgingly, about Fraser’s instructions to give his regards to everyone back in Chicago, and the fact that he specifically included Francesca and the Vecchios, as though he knew Frannie would be round needing something from Ray the moment he got back. “Everything ok?”

Frannie bites her lip. The uncertainty sits wrong on her, and it makes Ray sit up a little bit straighter and put down the pen.

“Sure,” she says. Her nails click an irregular rhythm on the desk. “We just haven’t heard from him in a while, so...”

“So you think he’s talking to Fraser, if he isn’t talking to you guys?”

Frannie frowns, and Ray feels like a heel. He reaches out and stills the tapping. “As long as he’s talking to someone, huh?”

She nods and Ray is, frankly, terrified to see bright tears threatening to spill out the corner of her eyes. She blinks and nods, briskly. She taps the nails again, this time just to annoy him.

“Just ask him to call Ma.”

Ray agrees and she departs, and it takes Ray a long time to get his head back into writing the reports.

-

It’s a few days before Ray has a chance to speak to Fraser. Monday is phone night. Fraser still has to shimmy up a telegraph pole or mirror semaphore to a carrier pigeon or something to connect the call, so they keep the schedule regular. At least, this way, Ray will know if Fraser’s in trouble, because his phone won’t ring at precisely 7.35 every Monday evening.

Fraser’s re-building the cabin again – how many times can one man end up with a pile of smoking rafters and still think the place is worth salvaging? – and he’s anxious to ask Ray’s opinion of fitting an actual log-burner, rather than the shitty free-standing stove he’s been relying on thus far. They talk about Maggie, and the baby, and Fraser details the crib he’s making while Ray dredges his memory for half-remembered stories told on the back of a sled when Fraser describes the scenes he’s carving into it from Inuit mythology.

“Sounds like you’ve got enough going on to keep you up there for a while,” he says, only meaning it’s a shame Fraser won’t be able to come down to see the Blackhawks against the Canadiens in the playoffs.

He can tell he’s misjudged something from the silence at Fraser’s end of the line. It feels uncomfortable; Ray’s no idea why, and he hates the static that makes the distance feel so oppressive, so he says the first thing that comes to mind.

“Hey, Frannie was asking after Vecchio – you heard from him, since, uh...”

“No,” says Fraser. “Not since the wedding.”

“Ah.”

“Has he not been in contact with the family?” Fraser asks, and this is exactly what Ray wanted to avoid, the concern that’s making Fraser’s voice rise at the end of his question.

“No, no, it’s not a big deal. She just wondered, you know…”

Fraser says nothing, and Ray knows he’s been unsuccessful in passing it off as insignificant. They salvage something of the conversation thanks to an anecdote about Huey and Dewey’s latest stand-up gig, but it’s not long before Fraser makes his apologies and says he needs to shimmy back down his telegraph pole before he loses the light.

Ray curses his own dumb luck when, three weeks later, his phone rings in the middle of the night and it isn’tFraser telling him he’s decided to give up the wilderness and come on home to Chicago.

“Kowalski?” a voice slurs.

Ray blinks and it takes him a moment to place it. “ _Vecchio?_ What the hell – what time is it?”

“I want – ” Vecchio says, sounding like he’s one shot from falling on his ass. “I want – to speak to Fraser.”

It takes Ray a second to work out what the fuck Vecchio is talking about. “Fraser? What, and you mis-dialled Chicago instead of the ass-end of Canada? Maybe leave giving him a call until you’re dry enough to punch the numbers.”

There’s a pause, punctuated by a deep, unsteady breath against the other receiver. “Fuck you, Kowalski.”

The line goes dead, and Ray is too tired to do much but toss the handset back onto his bedside cabinet and tug the comforter over his head.


	11. Evolution

Life in Chicago is the same for Ray Kowalski as it always had been. Post-Stella and pre-Fraser, this was exactly the pattern his days had followed: get up, go to work, eat pineapple pizza in his underwear; wash, rinse, repeat. He has his turtles, and he has his TV, and he’s starting in on that book Fraser had recommended about the history of the Franklin expedition. All said, he doesn’t think he’s doing badly, at all.

“You know,” says Frannie, the day he’s supposed to be finally packing up his stuff and going back to his own precinct. “Maybe you should try dating?”

She isn’t even trying it on with him, just leaning casually in the doorway to the records room and looking at him with an expression of affectionate, sisterly pity.

He thinks about Stella, all the way in Florida and shacked up with a human time-bomb, and realises his current pathetic state is nothing to do with sadness over the train-wreck that was the end of their marriage, and everything to do with his sudden hyper-awareness of the fact that he’s on his own. Truly, honestly, on his own, for the first time he can remember in a very long time. It’s actually pretty freeing, but he can see from Franny’s expression that’s not the way it’s coming across.

“Franny, do you want to go on a date with me?” he asks, lifting his head from the table to peer at her in what he hopes is a less-than-tragic way.

She shakes her head at him. “No, Stanley, I don’t. A tip, though, for when you try that again? Take a shower first.”

With a fond, mildly-disgusted glance, she leaves with the files she was looking for. He glances down at himself and realises he’s in the same clothes he was wearing when he arrested Marty Lewis at that garbage dump three nights ago. There’s a two-day-old coffee stain down the middle of his shirt. Frannie, he concedes, might have a point.

-

Of course, in the ongoing tragedy that is the life of Ray Kowalski, there is one reliable source of reassurance that he isn’t – yet – the most fucked-up guy in the whole of the continent of North America.

He’s recently suffered something of a revelation. It was a moment in which the fog of loneliness cleared and he realised that yeah, maybe he wasn’t cut out for a life of hardship and manly ruggedness in the wilds of the Northwest Territories, and maybe he is sleeping alone in a shitty apartment with no one but a turtle for company, but he’s had the good grace to find himself in a city which suits him, a job he’s damned good at, and with friends he knows he could call on, if he needed to. It’s fan-fucking-tastic to realise that contentment can be a pizza, a beer, and a night in front of the TV; that life wouldn’t automatically be better if every situation were engineered for two. It feels like he’s cracked some sort of secret code, discovered the meaning of his paltry existence – he wants to tell the world about this amazing new discovery, but Hewey looked at him like he was insane when he tried to articulate his mind-blowing epiphany, and it had only seemed to make Fraser sound distant and kinda sad, so he’d dropped it almost as soon as he’d brought it up.

It turns out the person he really needs to tell, anyway, is Stella. Vecchio supposedly whisked her off to the sunshine state for a life of happily-twice-wedded bliss, but the more Ray thinks about Stella – independent, ballsy, capable Stella – skipping town to go and run a bowling alley, the more he wishes he’d had time to come to this realisation _before_ he’d run away to the Yukon. He wishes they could have got coffee and talked things through and dealt with the situation like adults, instead of running off with the next best opportunities for companionship that came along.

The phone rings.

“How many fucking times, Vecchio? Fraser is not here – why would Fraser be here? It’s three in the fucking AM, and I am trying to sleep. And where the fuck is Stella? This it, Vecchio, you marry her, take her all the way to Florida, and then leave her alone while you – what? What is this thing with Fraser, anyway? Get the fuck off my phone, Vecchio!”

-

From the cabin, Fraser has an unbroken view of the foothills of the Mackenzie Mountains, and can see their peaks trailing into the distance, a chain of giants marching in the direction of the Liard River. He likes to spend his early mornings here, on the step, watching the sun rise over the mountains. It’s a reminder of everything he missed, while he was in Chicago; the expanse of the sky and the clarity of the light.

“Hello, son.”

Fraser takes a sip of tea. It’s still too hot, but it gives him time to pretend he’d known all along that he was being watched. “No offence, Dad, but I thought I’d gotten rid of you.”

“So did I, son. So did I. But your mother thought you needed a talking to, so here I am.”

Bob Fraser walks to the end of the step and stands, hands clasped behind his back, gazing out over the view; it was one of the things they’d always shared, the love of this particular part of the landscape.

After a few minutes, in which Bob says nothing and Fraser drinks his tea, Fraser gives in. He knows this tactic of old, but is in no mood for prolonging whatever advice he is no doubt about to receive.

“Dad,” he says, “why are you here?”

“I told you, your mother sent me. She worries about you, you know.”

Fraser says nothing. The sun is beginning to break over the furthest peak, painting it golden and pushing the blue light of dawn ahead of it down the valley.

“Where’s Diefenbaker?” Bob asks, exaggeratedly peering around the clearing. “Don’t tell me that wolf has left you and followed his nose back to the nearest fast food outlet.”

“No, he hasn’t. He’s out on the hunt.”

In truth, Fraser doesn’t know what Diefenbaker finds to do all day, but he suspects a good proportion of it amounts to what he’s trying to do himself; remembering why he’d wanted to come back here in the first place. In the evening, Diefenbaker would return, and curl up by the stove with his head on his paws, and Fraser would chide him hypocritically for allowing himself to succumb to melancholy.

“You know, son,” says Bob, seating himself on the step, “migratory animals, come the spring, return to their grounds above the tree line due to a biological imperative, not a pig-headed belief in where they think they ought to belong. You think they wouldn’t stay where the climate was pleasant and the food easier to come by, if nature didn’t dictate to them where they had to be?” He sniffs. “It’s a shame humans haven’t learned to make the most of the freedoms they’ve been granted by dint of evolution.”

Fraser could count on the fingers of one hand the times his father’s advice has turned out to be apposite and useful. He ignores him, watches the sun rise over the mountains, and by the time he’s prepared to turn and admit that Bob might be right, the old man has disappeared.

Diefenbaker, trotting up the steps of the cabin, pauses to nose against his outstretched hand, and whines when he finds there’s no food for him there. Fraser ruffles the fur behind his ears and rests his hand there, thoughts miles away from the day’s labours and the need to gather wood for the burner.

Diefenbaker barks quietly, nipping at the end of a finger, then flops down to curl despondently at Fraser’s feet.

“I know, Dief,” he says, eyes on the brightening horizon. “I know.”


	12. Just Peachy

Inspector Thatcher’s replacement in Chicago treats Constable Benton Fraser with bewilderment and something approaching abject fear. He isn’t cut-out for dealing with this sort of nonsense. Having spent all his life in Toronto, a fast-track from the University into the upper echelons of the RCMP, he is ill-equipped to know what to do with Constable Fraser, whose punctuality and good manners and air of steadfast pedantry leave him more than slightly unsettled.

Fraser’s bright-as-a-button smile, and the stories the other officers tell of cavalry charges and manhunts across the frozen wilderness remind him of being a city boy with an extensive library at his fingertips and his longing for the kind of excitement he read about in his adventure books. It’s disturbing, and he finds it easiest to allow Fraser to go about his business with as little official interference as is necessary, so that he doesn’t have to spend too many hours in his week confronted by that impassive, courteous face and the many ways Fraser manages to make his opinion of operational decisions patently clear through nuanced use of the word ‘Sir’.

-

“I tried resuming my life in the Yukon, and it was intolerable,” Fraser says quietly, one evening soon after he gets back to Chicago. “Once, it was all I knew, and I – ”

“Maybe you just gotta give it another shot, you know? There’s such a thing as life after Vecchio, Frase.”

They’re sitting on the floor of Fraser’s latest shitty apartment. It’s got no furniture, except the bedroll in the centre of the floor in the bedroom, and a couple of moth-eaten armchairs Ray found at a Goodwill and helped Fraser lug up the stairwell on his last weekend off. Ray intends to buy him a TV for his next birthday, so he’s got something to stand on a crate in the living room, and so they’ve got something to watch when he swings by with beer and pizza.

“I’m not sure I know how to live ‘life after’ him, Ray. After either of you.”

“Either of us? Either of the two people you know called Ray?”

“Yes.”

Ray looks at him helplessly, expression already folding itself into a shape of confusion. “To be honest, Frase, I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me, here.”

“Nor am I, entirely,” Fraser said, frowning and looking for all the world like a giant, bewildered plaid-wearing teddy bear. “Rest assured I don’t intend this to be received as any form of... romantic overture. It’s simply that my current existence, compared to my former life in the Yukon, has been utterly changed by the simple fact of our association. You’re a dear friend, Ray, and you’ve made it impossible for me to return to the Territories and resume my solitary existence.”

“Geez, way to make a guy feel like a tool, Frase. If you wanna go back to Tuk, you ain’t gonna be leaving me high and dry, you know.”

“I’m sure at some point in the future I’ll return to Canada, but for now obligation to you isn’t chief among my reasons for staying here.”

“What’s that, then?” Ray asks, shovelling another slice of pizza into his mouth.

Fraser smiles a happy little smile. Ray’s jealous of the way it makes him look like a beatific Renaissance painting. “I like it here,” he says, apparently as surprised by this admission as Ray is. “I missed Chicago more than I expected to.”

-

The first inkling Fraser has that Ray Vecchio has also returned to Chicago, is the miserable, pissed-off hunch to Ray Kowalksi’s shoulders, bent over his desk at the 19 and filling in his paperwork with vicious jabs of a ballpoint pen. In Fraser’s experience, only two people – three, counting himself – have managed to agitate Ray to the degree that irritation seems to seep out of his pores and colour the air around him.

“Good afternoon, Ray.”

The pen jumps on the page. “Geez, Fraser, you trying to give a guy a heart attack? Less sneaking up on people, goddamnit, you’re not in the Yukon, and I’m not a goddamn moose – ” he shakes the pen angrily and stabs away at the page to little effect, “ – what’s the point of these fucking things when you can never get all the ink out - ”

“I believe, Ray, that using a new pen would – ”

Ray holds up a hand and pushes his glasses furiously up his nose with the other. “Not today, Frase, alright? Any other day, I could handle a little of our adorable back-and-forth dynamic, but not today.”

“Is anything the matter?”

“The matter? No, Fraser, everything’s fine. Just peachy. First I get a notice of eviction, telling me my landlord’s selling my apartment from under me, then my ex-wife shows up on my doorstep telling me her jackass of a husband sold up the bowling alley and high-tailed it back to Chicago, trying to get his old job back. So, naturally, I ring the 27, get the Lieu to tell me it’s all a misunderstanding, Stella’s just gone crazy from all the sunshine and the cocktails, and he tells me he can’t talk right now, he’s got Ray Vecchio in his office asking to be relieved of his retirement, like that’s even a thing - ”

Fraser stands there for five whole seconds looking like Ray just straight-up slugged him in the guts before turning on his heel and making for the door.

"Frase! Fraser!" Ray grabs his jacket from the back of the chair. "Goddamnit."

-

The old Fraser would have run down to the 27 so fast he'd barely have left a shadow on the sidewalk. He’d have burst into the bullpen with hearts in his eyes and it would have been a complete fucking catastrophe, so Ray’s glad that the intervening years have taught him a little something about human relationships. At the very least, Fraser seems to have learned, over the past eleven months, that if a person wants to call, they will.


	13. Donuts

Diefenbaker appears to be suffering from none of Fraser's new-found reticence. Two days after Vecchio’s supposed reappearance in Chicago, the phone at the consulate rings while Ray's got his feet propped up on the desk and Fraser’s filing expenses claims for he and Turnbull, which shouldn’t be taking him this long, because to Ray’s knowledge neither of them have ever claimed an expense in their lives.

“Hello, Royal Canadian Consulate of Chicago, Constable Benton Fraser speaking.”

“Fraser?” says Lieutenant Welsh, clearly audible at the other end of the line. “Are you aware that your wolf is currently sitting in the middle of my department eating jelly donuts and seriously impeding the ability of my staff to get on with their work?”

Fraser blinks, raising an eyebrow minutely in Ray’s direction. “No, sir, I wasn’t aware that Diefenbaker had any plans this morning.”

“Well, I’m sorry to have to inform you of an oversight on your part,” Welsh replies. In the background, Ray hears Diefenbaker yip happily, his best ‘I am a very good dog and respond favourably to treats’ impression. “Come and get him, wouldya? If one more crime goes unsolved because my detectives are too busy entertaining your bottomless animal, I’ll be charging the Canadian government for the man hours.”

“Certainly, sir. I’ll be there right away.”

For a long moment after he puts down the receiver, Fraser seems to contemplate the desk in front of him.

“Hey,” Ray says, gently. “Want me to come with you?”

Fraser stands, reaching for his hat. “Thank you, Ray, that won’t be necessary.”

He leaves the expenses claims unfiled and scattered, apparently forgotten, on the desk behind him. Ray hopes to God Vecchio knows what’s coming.


	14. The Godfather

Fraser enters the 27 for the first time in six months and the same smell of coffee and cigarette smoke assails him, thick and familiar, and it would be easy to make the mistake of feeling like he never went away. Huey and Dewey are standing by the copy machine in the hallway and their faces crack into smiles as soon as they catch sight of him.

“Hey!” Huey calls. “Fraser! The Lieu didn’t say you’d be dropping by.”

He accepts Huey’s handshake and receives a thump on the back from Dewey.

“It was a spur of the moment invitation – I believe Diefenbaker has been making free and easy with the precinct's pastries.”

He casts a glance through the open doors to the bullpen. Elaine is leaning over Gilmore’s desk with a stack of files that look like they’re long overdue and through the Lieutenant’s office window he can see that Welsh is on the phone, appearing harassed.

In the corner, at his old desk, stands Ray Vecchio, taking off his scarf and folding it over the back of his chair. He seems older, as though a few months in Florida have left him tanned but exhausted. There’s gray hair at his temples, and he’s wearing a shirt which is, by his standards, frighteningly tame. There’s something unsettling about this picture, not least the fact that Ray’s sorting through files so determinedly, it’s clear he’s deliberately trying to pay no heed to what’s happening in the rest of the room.

Diefenbaker, of course, has no time for such nonsense. Fraser watches him trot over and happily nudge Ray’s hand, shoving his head in the way of the paperwork and forcing Ray to pet him.

“Hey, Dief,” Ray says quietly, rubbing him behind the ears in the way that makes the wolf nearly catatonic with joy. He glances up and meets Fraser's gaze. Fraser couldn't stop himself from letting the smile curl across his face if Jean Chrétien himself walked out of Welsh’s office and ordered him to stop behaving like a fool.

The hubbub of voices in the bullpen has quieted and Fraser is suddenly aware that six pairs of are watching surreptitiously from behind reports, waiting to see what happens next. Ray gives Diefenbaker a pat on the head and walks towards Fraser stiffly, eyes saying nothing that Fraser can read; that in itself gives him pause, and his confusion grows when Ray jerks his head in the direction of the break room.

"Gonna get coffee," he says, striding through the double doors without pausing to hold them open, leaving Fraser to follow in his wake, wondering why Elaine seems to look so sorry for him as she watches him go.

"It's good to see you, Ray," he says, sincerely, hoping that sincerity is the tool he’ll need to pick the lock he reads in Ray’s tense shoulders as he grabs a cup and helps himself to coffee.

“Yeah, you too, Fraser,” Ray says, back still turned. It makes Fraser want to reach out and grab him, because he can’t read the blank tone in Ray’s voice, and without seeing his face he won’t know how to work out what’s setting his nerves on edge.

“I came by to retrieve Diefenbaker,” he says, because Ray is behaving as though Fraser has trapped him here against his will, and he wants to make it clear that was not his intention. “But I was hoping we might be able to talk. I’d intended to buy you a coffee, but I can see you’ve no need of that, so -”

“Listen, Fraser, I got a lot of work to do -”

“Dinner, then. I’d offer to cook, but I’m afraid my apartment’s not entirely set up for visitors, yet. Perhaps the café on Broadway?”

“Fraser!” Ray raises his voice and it stops him in his tracks. “Just stop, alright? We’re not gonna go for dinner.”

Fraser curses his inability to stop his mouth from running away with him. Ray’s tone makes it sound like Fraser was making an unwelcome proposition, and that was never his intention, either. Fool he might be, but not fool enough to expect – well, nevermind. There is more at stake, here, than his own ridiculous daydreams. He hates the way Ray is so tired around the eyes; Fraser knows what it looks like when a man is sleep-deprived. He credits himself with being able to deduce that Ray has far too few people to talk to, and he wants to fix that, at least, even if nothing else.

“I’m your friend, Ray. I’d like to think you can talk to me, if that’s something that might be of help to you.”

“You don’t wanna be my friend, okay, Fraser.”

“Ray,” Fraser says, softly, heart in his mouth.

“I’m not – I’m not the kinda guy you wanna be around right now, trust me. I know you probably came here expecting us to pick up where we left off, but that’s not gonna happen. That guy don’t exist anymore.”

“Ray.”

Ray flinches away at the same moment as Fraser recalls his recalcitrant fingers and curls them into his palm. He had wanted to brush them against the soft wool of Ray’s sweater – he’d always liked Ray best like this, wearing dark, expensive knits and charcoal-coloured suit pants; so tempting to reach out and hold that it makes Fraser’s tongue clumsy and loose.

Ray sighs, like he can’t believe Fraser can still be so exasperating. “Remember when we saw ‘The Godfather’, the thing with the horse’s head?”

“Of course.”

“Yeah. Well, if Armando Langoustini had decided he wanted to send someone a warning, it’d be their girl instead of a horse. You get what I’m saying?”

Fraser nods, frowning, concerned. “I understand that the demands of your undercover persona placed you in a terrible position, Ray.”

“Don’t take offence, Benny, but the last time you went undercover you blew your cover inside three seconds of opening your mouth. You can’t do the deception thing, and that was ok when we were working as a team; I could do the deception thing just fine for both of us. But going to Vegas wasn’t a game of dress-up, I had to _be_ Langoustini, for every second of every goddamn day.”

“I became a thief and a fugitive from the law, Ray, and you forgave me.”

Ray scrubs a hand over his face. “Geez, Benny. You gotta drag that up?”

“You leave me no choice, Ray; it seems necessary to remind you that I’ve done plenty of things that might have shaken your faith in me. What I did was far worse than anything you might have been forced to do during the assignment, because everything I did was a choice I made of my own free will. I wantedto leave with Victoria, so I pushed you away, and now you’re doing the same thing – ”

“Bullshit, Fraser. This is completely different – ”

“Yes, you’re right, it is, but the outcome appears to be much the same.” Fraser lowers his voice in the hope that Ray will understand what he is trying to explain. “Must one or both of us be almost killed before you’ll let me try to make amends?”

Ray looks at him, eyes dark and difficult to read. His hand is trembling, but before Fraser can draw attention to it, he sets the cup down hard on the counter, hot coffee slopping over the sides. He jerks away sharply from Fraser’s hand on his arm.

“I’m sorry, Benny,” he says, voice rough. “This is all I got right now. Just – let it drop, okay?”

It hurts to look at him, standing there with coffee all over his suit pants and his eyes settling anywhere except on Fraser’s face, so Fraser steps to one side, like Ray’s an animal in a trap. “Okay, Ray.”

“Look, I gotta get back,” Ray says, grabbing the cup and heading for the double doors. “See you around, huh?”

“Yes, of course. Bye, Ray.”

By the time Fraser emerges into the bullpen, Ray is nowhere to be seen and his jacket and scarf are gone. Elaine glances at him and looks embarrassed on his behalf.

“We’ll be on our way, Diefenbaker,” he says, with as much dignity as the situation will allow. “Thank you kindly for your hospitality,” he adds, to Welsh, who has appeared at his office door.

“See you around, Fraser,” Huey says, as they pass him on their way to the street.

Fraser wishes, fervently, that everyone had been less kind. It’s uncharitable, and unfair, but he is smarting from being forced to acknowledge his own selfishness. Examining his motives for rekindling his and Ray’s friendship leads nowhere honourable. What plausible, comforting, convoluted reasons he could have invented for the fact that Ray took another bullet for him and went ahead and married Stella Kowalski anyway, start to slip through his fingers the minute he tries to marshal them into a coherent argument.

It's February, and the intense, painful cold of January in Chicago has subsided into a brief, early thaw that leaves Fraser warmer than he would like, but by no means uncomfortable on the short walk back to the Consulate. Ray Kowalski is waiting for him, as are the expenses claims.

“I’m sorry, Frase,” Ray says, as he takes off his hat.

Although he hates the discourtesy, Fraser finds himself incapable of formulating a response. Ray takes pity on him and starts recounting an anecdote about a drugs bust when he used to be in uniform at the 19, filling the silence and letting Fraser finish filing his forms without taking in a single word written on any of them.

“You want to get pizza?” Ray asks, when he’s done, and then kindly waits while Fraser is momentarily overcome by the gratitude he feels for the steadfastness of his friendship and needs to wipe his damp eyes on the corner of his handkerchief.

“Course you’ve got an honest-to-god handkerchief concealed about your person,” Ray says fondly. “Can’t just grab a Kleenex like a normal human being. Come on, you sad sack, I’ll let you choose the toppings.”


	15. Canadian-American Relations

Stella is classy, has always _been_ classy. Thing is, after the divorce, even though he still loves her and probably always will, for every great thing about her, Ray Kowalski is capable of acknowledging another thing about her that’s maybe not-so-great. Like, whereas before, he could have told you that Stella was smart and sexy, driven, ambitious, afterwards he could see the obsession behind the work ethic, the ruthless side to all that lust for success. And somehow, taking her down off of the pedestal he placed her on when he was thirteen years old – and it was a long goddamn process, learning how to do it - had made it possible to sit across from her in the booth at a diner near the precinct and attempt to have a civilised conversation.

“So, this is weird,” he says, when the silence between them slips just the wrong side of uncomfortable.

She smiles and takes a sip of her coffee. “Can’t say this is where I ever saw us ending up. I’ve got to say, I didn’t picture you coming back from Canada. I thought it’d suit you, at least for a while.”

He shrugs. “We did the whole wilderness bit, but the 19 was on my ass about getting back, and I was getting tired of pemmican – don’t ask – and there wasn’t really anything to keep me up there, so...”

Stella smiles, raising an eyebrow at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “Not even Fraser?”

Ray only narrowly avoids a literal spit-take, and chokes down his mouthful of coffee while staring at her, bug-eyed. “No! Jesus – no! Where the hell d’you get an idea like that?”

“You moved to the Arctic with him, it’s not a completely unreasonable assumption.”

“Unreasonable is exactly what it is! Jesus, Stel, how many years were we married, and you _assume_ I’d elope to Canada with a six-foot Mountie?”

“Stranger things have happened,” she said with a wry, tight smile. “The last year’s been living proof of that.”

Silence settles between them again while Ray scoffs at the idea of running away with Fraser, because anyone with eyes can see the guy’s a total dreamboat but he’s also usually three sentences from driving Ray completely round the bend. This time the silence between them is one he can live with. It’s familiar, and comfortable, and he’s so fucking grateful she said yes to meeting him, when he explained he just wanted to attempt being friends.

“Listen, I can take out a hit on Vecchio,” he says, when her mouth’s still got a sad tilt to it and she’s gazing at her coffee like it ran over her dog. “Just say the word.”

“Ray,” she says, admonishing, but she’s laughing, too, and Ray leaves the diner an hour later feeling like the world’s sitting slightly better on its axis.

-

None of which explains why he finds himself standing outside Vecchio’s house later that week, wondering whether tonight’s a good night to die, and where exactly Vecchio’s going to bury the body. The unseasonal thaw gave up the ghost a couple weeks back, and there’s enough snow on the ground that they might find him perfectly preserved in ice, if Vecchio shivs him and dumps him in Lake Michigan.

He knocks on the door and Maria answers, apparently in the midst of an exchange of views with Tony Jr. about his behaviour.

"Hi, Ray - that's exactly what I'm saying, mister, so you'd better get up those stairs right now - you wanna come in?"

"Uh, no, I'm good. I need to speak to Vecchio."

"Sure, hang on - _Ray? Ray's here!_ \- people who throw cannoli at their sister don't get to make bargains - _how should I know what he wants, why don't you come and ask him?"_

Vecchio appears wearing an expression that says he's this close to throwing Tony Jr. over his shoulder and hauling his ass up the stairs himself, and Ray almost feels sorry for him because through the open door to the dining room he can see the whole family peering at him. How the hell Vecchio’s managed to find any kind of headspace since he got back from Florida, Ray seriously doesn’t know. Not that he deserves Ray’s sympathy, even if Ray does remember how full-on, butt-clenching terrifying it was to walk into the Vecchio residence the first time and proclaim "Ma, I'm home!" and feel the weight of those six sets of suspicious eyes land on him. He's a man on a mission: he fixes Vecchio with his best interrogation glare.

"Vecchio. You and I need to have a word."

There's no fucking way Tony Jr.'s going to bed now; he's peering round the door with eyes like dinner plates and Maria's glancing between them like she's waiting for someone to throw the first punch.

"We got nothing to say to each other, Kowalski - go home."

"Well, I got plenty to say - I got concerns, Vecchio, about the state of Canadian-American relations."

That gets Vecchio's attention, and suddenly he's crowding Maria and Tony Jr. out of the conversation, trying to block their view of the doorway; it's impressive, for all that Vecchio ain't a big guy.

"Ray Kowalski?" Ma Vecchio calls, appearing in the hallway with a smile on her face. "Come in for dessert, _patatino_ , there's plenty left - don't leave him standing on the doorstep, Raimondo!"

It brings Ray a significant level of vindictive joy that Vecchio practically turns purple with rage at his ma’s use of her pet name for him; it arose from a joke Ray won’t deign to explain, and he glories, briefly, in waving the proof in Vecchio’s face that even his own family might like Ray more than him.

“We’re not discussing this here,” Vecchio says, low and dangerous, before Ray can reply - which is a damn shame, because he'd kill a man for another taste of Ma Vecchio's tiramisu. “Outside.”

Ray peers over his shoulder at the crowd of assembled Vecchios and gives them a cheery wave, wondering whether they’ll notice his body sticking out of the snow at the bottom of the yard.

“We’re heading out,” Vecchio says, and Mrs Vecchio smiles at the pair of them like he’s announced they’re going to the park to play on the swings.

“You boys wrap up warm, Raimondo, it’s cold out tonight.”

“Sure, Ma.”

“Cold!” Ray says as Vecchio shuts the front door behind them. “Compared to Tuktoyaktuk, this is tropical.”

Vecchio doesn’t look at him. “Yeah, I know. I was up there too, once, remember.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right – back when you still treated Fraser like he wasn’t just a piece of shit on the bottom of your shoe.”

That gets Vecchio’s attention. “You wanna say that again?”

“Sure, I’ll say it again. I’ll say it in goddamn Inuit. Hey, you know the Inuktitut for ‘quit being an asshole, you miserable son of a bitch’?”

For a moment, Ray wonders whether Vecchio even heard him – it’s like he’s frozen solid with rage - but then Vecchio’s face twists into this expression somewhere between anger and outrage, and he grabs two handfuls of the front of Ray’s jacket. He drags him backwards, shoving him so that he’s scrambling over the snowy lawn, until they’re hidden from the road by the side of the house and the overhang of the porch roof. He slams Ray hard into the wood-cladding, and Ray can see the murderous impulses scrolling behind his eyes like a goddamn telex display.

“Come on, then, Vecchio,” he says, because he’s riled up now, too, allowing some of his righteous anger to bubble to the surface. “Gonna hit me? Better make it good, because I owe you at least two separate ass-kickings.”

For a second, it seems likely to descend into a genuine brawl, and Ray knows he’s got the street-smarts to hold his own against most guys, but that Langoustini dude had had the glint of psychosis in his eyes back in that hotel room in Vegas, and Ray isn’t entirely sure which version of Ray Vecchio has his hand twisted in the collar of Ray’s shirt.

To his relief, after a long, tense moment Vecchio looses his grip and lets him up from the press of his back against the side of the house. He drops his head and lets out a sigh with a hard gust of white air. “Jesus, Kowalski. I ain’t gonna hit you.”

“Damn fucking right, you’re not,” Ray mutters, brushing himself down a little. “I might start on you, though, if you don’t get your fucking shit together.”

Vecchio looks tired, like all his nerves have been on edge for so long he’s forgotten how to relax. “You talked to Fraser.”

Ray snorts. “Well, yeah. Duh, he’s my _friend_. That’s what friends do for one another. And guess what, I talked to Stella too – oh, look, we’re back at the part of the conversation where I start calling you an asshole – ”

It’s possible, just possible, that Vecchio might have flinched. “You want a fucking prize? So you talked to Stella – I guess you got the details about what went wrong, so what the hell do you want from me?”

“I want to know what the fuck you thought you were doing, marrying her and then pulling this sort of shit.”

“I screwed up, alright, Kowalski?” There’s enough of the Mob boss left there, underneath, for Ray to feel a frisson of concern. “We both did; Stella wasn’t any happier down there than I was. That make it better? Go see her again, or something, she needs a friend right now. Just – just don’t come on like her knight in goddamn shining armour, and don’t give Fraser shit because of this. It ain’t his fault.”

“You just left Stella for him! _Stella!_ ”

Vecchio’s expression barely flickers this time, so Ray figures maybe Vecchio’s further along the road to self-acceptance than he would have imagined. It makes his treatment of Fraser doubly unforgivable.

“Yeah,” Vecchio says. “Well, Stella left me for her job and her life in Chicago and the fact that, apparently, I just ain’t what she’s looking for in a husband – guess you and me got something in common, after all.”

“Fuck you, Vecchio.”

Vecchio’s eyes blaze, and he presses Ray against the wall again, hand on his collar once more. “Fraser don’t got to know about this, _capisce_?”

“What, the fucking midnight phonecalls, or the fact you just left our wife for him?”

“‘Our’ wife? Jesus, Kowalski, you’re fucked up.”

"Ain't that the truth."

Vecchio's head drops and he takes a deep, shuddering breath. Ray considers how many different types of shit he'll be in with Fraser, when Fraser learns he's done what the Mob and the FBI never managed and finally broken Ray Vecchio.

"I need to sit the fuck down," Vecchio mutters, finally dropping the squared shoulders and the hand from Ray’s shirt. He pushes past and Ray follows him, joining him when he slumps to sit on the second of the porch steps, expensive slacks soaking up the dirty, melting snow.

They sit in silence while Vecchio fishes around in his jacket pocket. The moment is becoming stretched, and Ray is about to start up about his grievances again, when Vecchio sighs and says, in a defeated kind of way, "You got a light?"

Ray goes for the emergency lighter he’s started keeping in his jeans pocket, along with a lock pick and a roll of quarters - call it over-preparedness, or even paranoia, but working with Fraser will tend to do that to a guy.

He hands it over and Vecchio draws out an expensive-looking cigarette. “Want one?”

Ray shakes his head, remembering the feel of the stick between his fingers and the way Stella had hated him kissing her smelling of smoke. He’d swapped tobacco for caffeine and chocolate way back, and there’s no way, even without Stella, that he’s going to go back to it.

“Nothing in the notes said you smoked,” he says, when Vecchio is done lighting up and hands the lighter back.

Vecchio gives a tight shrug. “Langoustini smoked cigars; I’m too old for cold turkey.”

Smoke curls blue between them and Ray shoves his hands into his pockets, wishing he’d brought gloves.

“Listen," he says, "this thing with Fraser – ”

“There is no thing.”

“Yeah, and I’m the fuckin’ Pope.”

“There is no thing,” Vecchio repeats. He takes a deep breath and blows out a long, thin stream of smoke. “And if there had have been a thing, don’tcha think skipping town with the Feds woulda killed it pretty dead?”

Ray stares at him. “Are you insane? This is Fraser we’re talking about – he carried a torch for that Victoria bitch for _six years_. While she was _in jail_ , after he _arrested her_.”

It was definitely the wrong thing to say, because Vecchio’s expression folds in on itself like a collapsing house of cards. There is a long moment in which Ray guesses he should apologise because, really, he doesn’t even know the full story with Victoria, outside of what he read in the file, but he gets enough to know that Vecchio has to be carrying around some heavy baggage about it still; the killer combination of guilt and blame and unequivocal forgiveness – which, with Fraser, he can kinda understand. Vecchio grinds out the cigarette against the concrete and flicks it into the snow.

“You ever get that feeling,” Vecchio says, voice bleak. “One day Benny looks at you, and you know you’d do just about anything for him?”

“I took a bullet for him first day we met – so, yeah, I got that feeling. It just didn’t make me want to jump his bones. This thing? This is not an ‘us’ thing,” he says, indicating the two of them, “this is not an ‘everyone who works with Fraser’ thing. It’s just a you thing, Vecchio – a you and Fraser thing – and you gotta get your shit together, man, because you hurt him pretty bad with that bullshit at the precinct."

Vecchio laughs sharply. “I’m not the guy he wants me to be,” he mutters, and then cuts himself off, staring down at the dark smear of ash along the edge of the step.

Ray lets out an explosive, exasperated sigh. “Look, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but it’s the closest you’re gonna get to a freakin’ pep talk, so listen up: how in the hell is Fraser supposed to demonstrate how very fucking deeply he understands all your shit with the Mob, and treat you with every gram of his Canuck sensitivity, when you’re being such a fucking coward and hiding from him?”

Vecchio glances at him, eyes flashing, but Ray holds his ground because, for crying out loud, _somebody_ has to feed Vecchio the cold, hard truth sooner or later. Vecchio deflates after a moment or two and settles for looking old and sad. “I put my ass on the line way too often already,” he says.

“Suck it up,” Ray says, even though he knows he sounds like a dick. “Fraser’s worth it, right?”

If his being a dick is what it takes, he’s prepared to live with it – and doesn’t that just give him a warm, glowing feeling inside, to selflessly sacrifice his charming reputation in the cause of nudging Fraser towards lasting happiness.

He gets to his feet, realising his ass is numb and it's nearly ten P.M. and he's done playing therapist to a guy he doesn’t even like. “Look, I gotta get going. Give my regards to Ma and all the little Vecchios, ok?”

“Yeah, sure.” Vecchio isn’t even looking at him, and while Ray wasn’t exactly expecting gratitude, a little acknowledgement of his ability to talk this through with Vecchio like an adult and not kick him to the ground and dance on his dirty, ex-wife-stealing fingers would have been nice.

“Douchebag,” he mutters under his breath as he walks away down the street to where he parked the GT, and it makes him feel a little better.

-

The thing is, Ray means to keep the promise he made to Vecchio. He gets another coffee with Stella, and he intends not to say anything to Fraser and just hope that Vecchio gets his shit together, but after too many evenings of watching Fraser’s smile turn wistful and sad over beer and junk food, his patience has worn thin enough to snap.

It’s March, and the snow has finally thawed. Ray is grateful for this because Fraser has them running surveillance on an apartment in a rough neighborhood and he’s been holed up in the derelict, windowless apartment opposite all night. Fraser, convinced he needed a better vantage point, is perched somewhere above him in the darkness of the fire escape.

“Fraser?” he hisses into his radio.

“Yes, Ray?” Fraser replies. “Over.”

“You ok up there?”

“I’m fine, thank you, over.”

Ray sighs and rubs his hands together, wishing he’d brought the reindeer-pelt mittens he’d carried all the way back from Canada for occasions just such as these. “Nearly time to call it a night, huh?”

There’s a rustling sound, and then Fraser appears, feet first, through the open window. He slithers over the sill and lands like a cat, all springy and agile in a way Ray still resents in such an enormous human being.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” he says, dusting himself down. “The information led us to expect movement between eleven and two; it’s now – ” he checks his watch. “Oh, my. It’s almost five-thirty.”

“Excellent,” mutters Ray, hoping some feeling returns to his fingers once they’re back in the car. “Fantastic. First day off for three weeks, and how do I get to spend it? Sleeping off an all-night bust.”

In the end, Ray flat-out refuses to drive over to the Consulate and back, so he finds Fraser the spare comforter and makes them both a mug of disgusting bark tea, and they sit in the dark of his apartment watching the sun rise over the city.

“How was your date with Stella?” Fraser asks, once the tea is cool enough to drink.

“Not a date, Fraser.”

“Apologies. Your entirely platonic meeting over coffee.”

“Thank you,” Ray says, rising above the sarcasm. “Good, actually. Great. It was good to talk, you know? Been a while.”

“And it definitely wasn’t a date?”

Ray thinks about it for a while, turning the question over and examining his feelings from a number of angles. “Nah,” he says, in the end. “I’m happy being me by myself for a while.”

“You certainly seem... calmer, these days.”

“This?” Ray says, indicating the smile that’s been on his face pretty much since he realised spending time with Stella didn’t fill him with any kind of feelings, other than fondness for the memories they’ve shared. “This is the face of Zen-like contentment in my own company.”

"It certainly suits you."

"How 'bout you?" Ray asks after a while, while the sky turns orange and the sound of traffic starts to rumble above the quiet, emptiness of the city before dawn.

To his relief, Fraser doesn't try in his usual pitiful way to dissemble or pretend he doesn’t know what Ray’s getting at; he just smiles sadly to himself and tips his mug in Ray’s direction in a tragic little salute. "I would be very grateful to be able to say the same."

Ray rolls his eyes. He sighs. He wonders whether he’ll actually be able to handle it, if Fraser and Vecchio get it together, because it’ll mean spending time with both of them and he might as well just shoot himself in the head right now and have done with it.

“Listen, Frase, I just gotta say this, and then I swear I’ll let it drop forever; you won’t ever hear Vecchio’s name from this mouth again -"

"A sentiment I appreciate, Ray, but it’s completely unecessary; I’ve made my peace with Ray’s feelings on the matter. There’s no need to console me, although I appreciate your trying."

"Fraser. The dude’s crazy about you."

"All evidence would seem to be to the contrary.”

"Bull. You think he came back to Chicago for the weather?"

Fraser is silent for a moment and Ray watches some kind of emotion struggle for dominance on his handsome, stupid face. “Please, Ray. I think you’ve reached the wrong conclusion about Ray’s motivations.”

“Well, I haven’t, but don't take it as a massive compliment, 'cause the guy's crazy, period..."

"Ray."

"For cryin’ out loud, Fraser. I’m gonna speak, and you’re just gonna listen, ‘cause I swear this is the last time I’m playing agony aunt. I get that there’s a ton of water under the bridge; I’ve no fucking clue how you ended up making such a fucking mess of each other, but I’m guessing it begins with ‘V’ and ends with ‘psychotic bitch who got you shot’. Plus, Vecchio’s got issues on top of issues after the shit with the Mob. And there’s the fact that I still just kinda think the guy’s a douche.”

“You’ve spoken to him?”

“Oh, come on, Frase. Could you _try_ to sound a little less like a fourteen-year-old girl at a school dance? Yes, I spoke to him. Just... try again, ok? Seems like it’s worth it.”

Fraser is silent for a long time and then, in a low, sincere voice, he says: “Thank you, Ray.”

“No problem.” He folds his hands around his mug and basks in feeling like he’s got his good deed for the day out of the way early.

They sink into a deep silence, punctuated only by car horns and the distant sound of an argument somewhere on the sidewalk a block away.

As he’s drifting off, his eyes heavy and his fingers finally toasty warm, Ray realises Fraser’s still gazing out the window, his expression unreadable. “Hey, Frase. I can do that ‘pretending to be asleep so you can open up about your feelings’ thing, if you need to talk.”

“Thank you, Ray, that won’t be necessary.”

Ray can hear that Fraser is smiling, so he guesses he’s got something right.


	16. Coffee and an Omelet

“ _Ray? It’s Benton Fraser, I’m calling from the Consulate._ ”

Ray Vecchio had known, the minute his phone started ringing, that there was every chance it would be Fraser. It’s why he’s adopted a policy of letting every call ring through to the message machine, because you can’t trust Kowalski to hold his tongue, even under pain of death and dismemberment.

“ _I was wondering, Ray, whether you’d consider meeting me for a cup of coffee, at some point this week. I understand if you don’t want to, of course – and I’m sure Lieutenant Welsh is keeping you busy with cases - but I really would very much like to see you.”_

“Ah, geez, Benny,” Ray groans, head in his hands.

“ _So, I will be at the cafe on Broadway at half past three on Friday afternoon. If you were to join me, I would... well, it would make me very happy.”_

-

Ray gets home from work and the smell of ribollita and the noise of the kids yelling drifts down the driveway to him as soon as he gets out of the car. It’s beginning to feel good setting foot through the front door again, like he doesn’t have to worry he’s gonna let the Bookman come to the surface the minute Tony Jr. sets his last nerve on edge. He’s been so fucking careful not to let anyone see the cracks, but he thinks Ma gets it, from the way she rests a hand on his shoulder and ushers the kids out of the room before they see his knuckles are white around his knife and fork. It feels good, finally, to be home again, and he’s grateful for that, because it’s been a long fucking week.

Frannie’s waiting for him when he gets inside, and she hovers in the hallway as he takes off his coat and scarf.

“Listen,” she says, when he tells her to spit out whatever it is that’s bothering her. “I’ve got something to tell you, but you’ve got to promise you won’t get mad. I’m gonna need you on my side when Ma finds out and – ”

“Raimondo! Francesca! Dinner’s ready!”

The door is tugged open and Tony gives the pair of them a doleful look. “Maria’s about to dish up, you two better get your asses in here.”

Frannie rolls her eyes and stomps off in the direction of the dining table. “Geez, Ma! We’re coming, give me a minute to relax once I get in from work!”

“Tony’s done a day’s work too, Frannie, and he manages to make it to the dinner table on time – ”

“Maria, bite me. It’s not like it’d do Tony any harm to miss a couple meals.”

“Francesca!”

Tony and Ray share a sympathetic look as Ray takes out a hanger for his coat and starts to toe off his shoes.

“I’ll be there in a minute, ok?” he says, and Tony nods before heading back to the table.

Later, when Tony’s watching the game and Ma and Maria are singing along in the kitchen to the CD of show tunes Frannie bought Ma for Christmas, Ray escapes upstairs and sits for a long time on the end of his bed, wondering how long it’ll be before he stops flinching when one of the kids drops something in the middle of dinner. It wasn’t Gabriella’s fault; Tony Jr. had tried to put salt in her juice and she’d kicked him and the glass had tumbled off the table and shattered into pieces. Maria had started scolding the pair of them, and Ma had flown into the kitchen for a towel so the juice didn’t sink into the rug, and Frannie had been comforting Gabriella, who’d burst into tears. It had been Tony Sr. who’d cast him a glance and said, quietly, “Wouldn’t blame you if you needed to tap out,” and Ray had taken a deep breath and realised his hands were clenched into fists either side of his plate.

“Can I come in?”

Frannie is lurking in the doorway looking uncharacteristically tentative, and Ray makes certain to smile, because it’s not her fault he’s still a fucking basket case.

“The kids get louder while I was away?” he says, tiredly.

“Nope, just older and potty-mouthed. It’s a lot to get used to, huh?” She hesitates, and he hates that she’s still so careful around him. “You miss us, down there in the desert?”

“Every day.”

It’s a pardonable lie – when you’re undercover, you can’t afford to think about the things you miss, the things you won’t get to see again if one of the goons with the berettas works out you’re not who you’re supposed to be. And in Florida – in Florida, he’d tried hard not to think about any of the things he’d left behind in Chicago. Ma’s pasta e fagiole still smells the way it had when he was a kid. Tony and Maria still scream at each other as though it’s the only way they know of demonstrating their affection. The only thing he misses now is himself – the old Ray, with the smart mouth and the flash car, who wasn’t such a fucking drag for everyone around him.

Frannie comes into the room and sits beside him on the bed. She folds her fingers around his and rests her head on his shoulder, her pointy chin digging into the muscle and making him want to squirm. She’s done it since they were kids, and he’d die before he admitted how much better it makes him feel.

“Frannie,” he says, squeezing her hand. “I’m sorry about your birthday. It was just everything with the move, you know.

“I got my brother back,” she says. “That’s enough.”

“I’ll take you out someplace nice, I promise. How ‘bout next week?”

“You better.”

She kisses his cheek and then uses her thumb to wipe away the lipstick she’s left behind. It’s late – late enough that downstairs Maria is starting the nightly argument with Tony Jr. about brushing his teeth.

“What was it you wanted to tell me?” he asks, suddenly remembering the conversation before dinner.

She hesitates. Ray can’t ever recall Frannie being so fucking reticent; it’s as though she’s grown up since he left, and he wishes he could tell her how proud he is of her for it. She bites her lip and smiles. “It can wait.”

“You got me worried, now.”

She shakes her head and gets up to go back to her room. “Don’t. It’s a good thing, I promise.”

On her way out, she pauses. “Love you, Raimondo.”

Ray smiles at her, again, and this time he thinks he might actually mean it. “You too, Frannie.”

She retreats, pulling the door closed behind her.

Ray crawls up the bed and lies with his head tipped back against the comforter, listening to the sounds of his family filling up this house that he inhabits but hasn’t felt like he belongs in in such a long time. Somewhere, on the other side of the city, Fraser is probably already tucked up in bed.

Ray wants what he’s always wanted, which is to drive over there and crawl into that stupid bedroll with him, and just let Fraser take care of things for a while. He wants Fraser’s giant, gentle hands to hold him down and for Fraser not to care about his fancy shoes and the fact he’s got hang ups like crazy from his Pop about what it means to be a man, and he just wants Fraser, period. The fact that Fraser apparently wants him too, and has done, through all the time he’s spent running away from what that means, is flat out fucking terrifying. There’s finally no one getting in his way but himself, and now that he’s here, he realises he has no fucking clue what to do about it.

-

It's 3.29 when Ray pulls up on Broadway, a little way down from the diner, and on the other side of the street so he can get a good look at the place, scope it out a little before he makes his decision about what the fuck he intends to do. He rests his hands on the wheel and watches pedestrians go about their business, kids who just got out of school and people shopping for groceries and the usual collection of losers and grifters, the ones whose movements Ray makes a mental note of, even when he isn’t supposed to be on the clock.

At a table in the window sits Fraser; he's in uniform minus the hat, and his profile is so goddamn familiar and perfect it's like a fist straight in Ray’s stomach. He's holding a menu, the little laminated card that tells him what greasy food he can pretend to enjoy, and then, as though he’s nervous, Ray sees him check his watch.

A waitress appears, blonde and young and pretty, and Ray can tell just by the way she’s standing that she's putting on a show for Fraser, all big eyes and asking if he wants to hear the specials. Fraser orders, she smiles at him like she’ll be the soup of the day if Fraser’s the one asking for it, and Fraser’s completely oblivious, of course he is. He’s checking his watch again.

"Goddamnit," Ray says, getting out of the car.

When he pushes open the door, Fraser’s eyes snap up from his contemplation of his pot of English breakfast tea so quickly Ray’s worried he’ll give himself a migraine.

“Ray!” he says, like it’s the best thing he’s heard all day.

“Hey, Benny.”

The waitress comes over before Fraser can say anything embarrassing, looking mildly pissed off that Fraser has company, and Ray smirks at her like an asshole and orders coffee and an omelet because he’s felt like he’s going to hurl all day and skipped lunch.

“Thought we’d lost you to the snow and the mooses,” Ray says, to head Fraser off before he can say something honest and sentimental. “Didn’t think you’d be coming back.”

“I missed Chicago,” Fraser says, like it’s still a revelation to him, too.

Ray settles back in his chair, because this is what he’s been jonesing for: he and Fraser across a table, Fraser’s mouth curled up in that pleased little smile. Ray is just as sick for it as he always was, and suddenly there’s no need to rush anything, so he kicks back and enjoys letting Fraser roast him so goddamn politely for all the stupid decisions he’s made leading up to this point.

By the time his omelet arrives, he’s got his legs stretched out underneath the table and his calf is resting against Fraser’s ankle, the slightest pressure of skin against skin through socks and slacks, and it feels daring and brave in a way Ray hasn’t felt for a while. Neither of them have acknowledged it, but Fraser’s looking flushed and pleased, so Ray congratulates himself for finally doing something right.

“Alright, alright,” he says, waving his knife and fork in Fraser’s direction, “so, I opened a goddamn bowling alley. Whose bright idea was that, anyway? Ah!” He points a finger at Fraser, who is in the act of opening his mouth. “Don’t even, Benny.”

Fraser’s lips twitch upwards. “Understood. I see you’ve bought a new car,” he adds, nodding out of the window in the direction of the Riv.

“Say hello to the new Vecchio-mobile,” Ray says, with pride. Outside, the Riviera glints greenly in the afternoon sun. “Found her on E-bay, had her hauled all the way up from Birmingham. Worth every cent.”

The waitress returns, fills his coffee, and he takes the opportunity to study Fraser’s flushed, handsome face. “The Lieu said your apartment burned down?”

“The building,” Fraser corrects. “I lived in the Consulate for some months, while you were away.”

“In the Consulate, like, in an apartment?”

“Not exactly,” Fraser says, looking shifty.

Ray starts laughing, because Frannie’s already told him about Fraser bedding down in an office like an accountant going through a divorce, and he’s fairly sure this is the best he’s felt in months, years, even. Fraser’s smiling, too. It’s like neither of them can help it, and it makes Ray feel like an idiot that he’d thought this conversation would be so hard.

"Well, I’m back in my old neighborhood, now,” Fraser is saying, defensively. “I’m barely paying any rent, apparently the landlord’s happy to have someone living there to keep an eye on things. It seems most prospective tenants are put off by the lack of an elevator.”

“Just the elevator?”

“And the heating,” Fraser concedes. “That might also be a factor.”

“I think most people just take a look at the neighborhood and decide to take their chances in a dumpster on the other side of town.”

By the time they’ve talked about every safe topic Ray can come up with, and Fraser’s relaxed enough to discard the red jacket and roll up his sleeves, the sun’s sunk behind the buildings on the other side of the street and it’s getting on for evening. The waitress has given up pestering Ray about re-fills and left the check on the side of the table, along with a napkin she slipped in Fraser’s direction with a wink, leaving him blushing and awkward and making charming apologies.

“Frannie’s pregnant,” Ray says, when she departs again, his voice low now they’re leaning over the table towards one another, his hands around his empty coffee cup to prevent him making a fool of himself.

“Ray, that’s wonderful news,” Fraser says, beaming. “Please, give her my congratulations.”

“I will, but you gotta keep this on the down-low for a while – Ma doesn’t know yet, and you’ll be able to hear the bust up from your apartment when she finally finds out.”

“Is the father...” Fraser flounders for the right expression, and Ray takes pity on him, shaking his head.

“No, and she won’t tell me the schmuck’s name, so as far as Ma’s concerned it was an immaculate conception.”

“Ah. I always imagined Francesca would be an excellent mother. Is she pleased to be expecting?”

Ray nods and smiles. “Yeah, she’s thrilled. We’re all thrilled – even Ma will be, eventually, once Frannie spills the beans. She loves grandkids.”

Outside, there’s commuter traffic and people in business suits dashing for the ‘L’ train. It’s as though time’s running faster out there than inside, where Ray feels like he’s been for days, listening to the sound of Fraser’s voice.

“May I ask you something, Ray?”

Ray blinks, trying to focus. “Sure, go ahead.”

“Are you happy?”

“For Frannie? Sure I am! Can’t say I’m overjoyed at the prospect of another screaming kid in the house, but if it’s what she wants, it’s what she wants.” Ray glances at Fraser and finds him trying to cover up his look of disappointment. He sighs. “Geez, I’m sorry, Benny. I’m being an asshole. Ask me again.”

“Ray, are you happy?”

“These have been the crappiest two and a half years of my life – and let me tell you, they got some stiff competition.” Fraser nods, avoiding Ray’s eyes. His ankle is still resting against Ray’s leg and Ray nudges it to get his attention. “But you know what?”

Fraser glances up, his eyes cautious and hopeful. “What, Ray?”

“Right now, here... Yeah. Yeah, I’m happy. Feels like the first time in...”

“Two and a half years?” Fraser’s hand moves the few inches across the table it takes to cover Ray’s with his own, big and warm and slightly damp. “That sounds accurate, to me.”

Ray shoots a glance at the waitress, but she’s winding gum around the end of her finger and reading a magazine behind the counter. Outside, the city of Chicago apparently manages to remain standing, and nobody on the sidewalk appears to notice the six-foot, matinee-star Mountie and the balding cop holding hands just inside the window. 

“What made you come and find me today, Ray?”

Ray looks at their hands, perfect and ridiculous next to the remains of Ray’s unfinished omelet and the screwed up napkin with the waitress’s phone number scrawled on it in lipstick. He takes a deep, steadying breath.

“You mean, specifically today? Aside from the fact you were sitting here looking like the last puppy in the pet store and I saw you through the window and felt sorry for you?”

Fraser pulls a face which means he’s trying hard not to smile. “Yes, Ray, besides that.”

Ray sighs. “Geez, Benny, I don’t know. I got your message, and I couldn’t just leave you sitting here on your own. I didn’t – I didn’t even wanna come, I just... You make life too goddamn complicated, you know that, right?”

Fraser nods. “Nevertheless, I’m glad you’re here. Do you remember, Ray, what you once told me during a card game, about the nature of love?”

Of course Ray remembers. He remembers everything he’s ever said to Fraser, had months to replay every memory of their conversations when it was the only thing that stopped him going nutso in the desert. “Remind me.”

“You said that the way to know whether what you feel for another person is truly love, is to wait for the moment when you realise your life will never be the same again, due to the simple fact of having known them.”

“And that’s what you and me got, huh?”

Fraser smiled. “I believe it is, Ray, yes. My only regret is that it took your sojourn in Las Vegas, and mine in the Territories, to make me understand that.”

Ray studies him carefully, giving himself the luxury, finally, of looking the way he always wanted to. Fraser has turned Ray's hand in his and now strokes the pad of one enormous thumb over Ray’s palm.

"Is this too much?" he asks, quietly.

Ray says nothing and lets the sweep of Fraser’s thumb over his skin settle into him. It’s ridiculous - completely _insane_ \- that something as simple as Fraser’s digit on a square inch of his skin could make the heat start to pool in the pit of his stomach the way it is doing. He looks at their reflection in the window and realises he’s smiling.

The waitress abandons the magazine and comes to clear away the plate; Ray slides his hand from Fraser's and presses it into his thigh beneath the table. She departs, with a scornful glance in Ray’s direction, and Ray realises Fraser’s been gazing at him the whole time, like he can’t bear to tear his eyes away.

“So,” Ray says, “now what?”

Fraser frowns. “I’m sorry, Ray, I don’t follow.”

“I _mean_ , if you were a chick I’d be buying you a fancy dinner and taking you back to my place for coffee and dessert.”

Fraser flushes and sweeps the curve of his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. “Ah.”

“And I would, you know, I really would, but Ma’s at home with Maria’s rugrats, and that’s a conversation I _really_ don’t wanna get into just yet. Plus, Frannie’ll scratch my eyes out if I set a foot through my bedroom door with you in tow – ”

Fraser’s mouth curls into a slow smile at ‘bedroom’ and his voice drops into something low and intimate when he murmurs: “We could always have coffee and dessert at my apartment, Ray.”

His tongue’s doing the lip thing again, and Ray struggles not to become transfixed by it. He nods. “You do realise we’re not actually gonna be having coffee, or tiramisu, or whatever?”

“I’d rather been counting on that.”

How does Fraser _do_ that? All of a sudden, his voice is like molasses and he’s staring at Ray like he’s considering doing something that’ll get them both arrested for public indecency. Ray shoves his chair away from the table with a squeal of wood against linoleum and throws down a handful of notes to cover the check. “Alright then,” he says. “We’re leaving.”

-

In the darkness of Fraser’s apartment, by the light of a single bare bulb, which is so familiar it’s like stepping back in time, Fraser is prevaricating, setting his keys on the kitchen counter with careful deliberation and taking time to separately remove each of his shoes. Ray knows he’s giving him time to reconsider, and it’s sweet and lovely and completely the opposite of what Ray wishes he were doing right now.

“Are you absolutely certain about this, Ray? There really is no need to rush.”

Ray wonders whether Fraser has any idea of the need that’s thrumming through him, like electricity under the surface of his skin. He feels like he wants to jump out the window just to make it stop. He’s waited a long fucking time, and all the smooth moves he’d usually pull have deserted him, because this is Fraser, and he’s always been more than Ray was able to handle.

“Benny, there is every need to rush, and so help me God, if you make me wait another minute, I ain’t gonna be responsible for my actions.”

Fraser nods, calmly, as though he’s making a decision, then places his hands upon Ray’s shoulders, propelling him backwards towards the door.

“Oof! Benny, what the – ”

Ray realises, as Fraser draws nearer, this is what it looks like when Benny’s uncertainty and nervousness and charming reticence evaporate and leave him staring at you like you’re the sole focus of his attention. His eyes are dark and serious and he’s glancing at Ray’s mouth, signalling his intent.

“Ray,” he says, and Ray suddenly rediscovers that he speaks fluent Fraser: it’s a warning, and a question.

He nods while Fraser finds a way to get even closer, nudging his thigh between Ray’s knees to press him flush against the door. “Yeah.”

Fraser kisses as though he wants to remember every millisecond of the progress of his lips across Ray’s own. His tongue is hot and slick and Fraser clearly could give a crap that Ray’s been knocking back cup after cup of burnt diner coffee because he moans right in Ray’s mouth, like Ray’s the best thing he’s tasted all year.

“Am I,” Fraser asks, breaking away to apply himself to the corner of Ray’s jaw, “making up for the lack of coffee and tiramisu?”

Ray tips his head back against the door and closes his eyes as Fraser nips and mouths his way down the column of his throat. “Christ, Benny, yeah. You’re killing me.”

Fraser hums his approval and slides his fingers between the buttons of Ray’s shirt, deftly flicking them open until he can slide a hand inside.

“This is what they mean about a Mountie always getting his man, huh?” Ray says.

Fraser presses his face against Ray’s neck, huffing out a warm chuckle.

“I know, I know, it was bad. Look, Fraser, come up here for a second – ” Fraser reappears, a deep flush heading south beneath the collar of his uniform. Ray makes a start on the buttons, desperate to follow it and see where it ends up. “I’m sorry for the Feds and, _God_ , for Florida – and being an asshole the last coupla weeks.”

“Ray, you don’t need to apologise – ”

“Yes, Benny. Yes, I do. I just – I’ve started therapy, FBI mandated, I don’t get a choice – but. Things are gonna get better, ok?”

“Ray -“ Fraser says, his voice soft and sad, and the last thing Ray wants is for this, the best thing that’s happened to him in as long as he can remember, to be derailed by all his usual bullshit.

He bats Fraser’s hands away and starts in on trying to get through all the layers of serge to some actual skin. “You know, if you didn’t polish these goddamn buttons so often, it’d be a lot easier to undress you.”

“Allow me.” Fraser steps back and begins to undress himself with unseemly but gratifying speed. He pulls off his jacket and lets it drop to the floor – Ray doesn’t think he can remember a time when Fraser has allowed RCMP property to be so badly mistreated - and slides his braces off his shoulders. “Can we leave apologies and what will no doubt be a difficult conversation for the both of us until tomorrow?”

“You’re standing there like Mr. November from some porno Mountie calendar, and you expect me to be able to argue?”

Fraser’s blush deepens and he licks his bottom lip that way that has driven Ray insane for years. “Take off your shirt, Ray.”

If Ray hadn’t already been turned on, he’s pretty sure he’d be feeling light-headed right about now from the speed with which all his remaining blood heads south. “Fuck,” he manages to say, tugging his shirt out of his pants, letting it join Fraser’s on the floorboards. Next are his shoes – toed off a second before he unzips his pants and discards them, along with his socks, somewhere in the region of the shirt. Fraser is matching him garment for garment, and when it comes to underwear Ray figures what the hell, slips them off, and finally stands there butt-naked, hard, and as turned on as he ever has been before in his life.

There’s something liberating about standing naked as a jaybird in front of the guy you’ve been fantasising about consistently for the past three and a half years – who, by the way, is built like a Greek god and somehow manages to _glow_ from the inside in the light of the bare electric bulb. There’s something arousing as fuck about the way Fraser’s looking at him, like he barely believes his luck, like he’s starving and Ray’s the whole goddamn meal.

“Bedroom through there?” Ray asks, indicating the door on the left with a tilt of his head.

Fraser nods, already leading the way; Ray follows and shuts the door behind them.

-

Outside in the parking lot, Diefenbaker jumps into Ray’s new Riviera through the open back window – really, even on Racine, who’s going to steal a car that has a wolf installed instead of a stop-lock? – and settles down on the back seat to sleep until morning, by which point he hopes someone will have remembered to prop open the window leading into the apartment from the fire escape. He likes the smell of the new car. It smells like his alpha’s mate, the first bringer of donuts and bagels, the one with the loud, excitable pack, whose cubs fussed over him, fed him leftover pasta when no one was looking, and inexplicably called him ‘good doggy’. He puts his head on his paws and yawns, then falls asleep dreaming about chasing cats through alleyways and the simple pleasure of rooting through the garbage bins behind a Chinese restaurant.

Across town, Ray Kowalski drives Stella Vecchio – soon to be Stella Robinson again, for the first time since she was nineteen and full of love for a boy named Stanley – home, and is kinda glad she doesn’t ask him to stay.


End file.
